Analysis of the Poem, 35/10, by Sharon Olds Essay example

As Wendy Martin says “the poem leaves the reader with painful impression of a woman in her mid-fifties, who having lost her domestic comforts is left to struggle with despair. Although her loss is mitigated by the promise of the greater rewards of heaven, the experience is deeply tragic.” (75)

Many people are racist to humans that don't even realize they're being denied by the others. In this poem, On the Subway, Sharon Olds talks about how a lady feels threatened by a poor man that wasn't staring at her in that way. The tone in this poem infers that the man is a poorly man looking for money and the lady probably believes he's trying to harm her. Two different types of lives that anyone can misinterpret.

Reflections Within is a non-traditional stanzaic poem made up of five stanzas containing thirty-four lines that do not form a specific metrical pattern. Rather it is supported by its thematic structure. Each of the five stanzas vary in the amount of lines that each contain. The first stanza is a sestet containing six lines. The same can be observed of the second stanza. The third stanza contains eight lines or an octave. Stanzas four and five are oddly in that their number of lines which are five and nine.

The poem “35/10” by Sharon Olds is about a mother's envy towards her daughter's youth and beauty. She shows this through a negative connotation of herself and positive connotation for her daughter. In lines 1-4, she writes, “Daughter’s brown/Silken hair before the mirror/ I see the gray gleaming on my head/ The silver haired servant behind her.”

In the poem “On the Subway,” Sharon Olds uses imagery and descriptive language, tone, and metaphors and similes to express the contrast between the two individuals and her thoughts afterwards. Olds uses imagery and descriptive language to show the differences between them. She’s white he’s black, he’s “dressed poorly like that of a mugger” but she has on a fur coat. She’s eating steak but he is not, and they are on opposite sides of the car. She also uses similes and metaphors. “A couple of molecules stuck in a rod of light rapidly moving through darkness.” which I think explains the train ride. “he is wearing red, like the inside of the Body exposed.” showing how open he is from all the negativity he gets from his skin color. “The rod of

Literary Compare and Contrast Essay The poems "35/10" and "The One Girl at the Boys Party" by Sharon Olds explore the process of puberty that one experiences in life. In the case of both poems, this process specifically targets females entering womanhood. Additionally, the poems each discuss several factors involved with the concept of aging, and the themes both appear to have similar and different elements. “35/10” targets the maturity of females in a physical matter while “The One Girl at the Boys Party” focuses on the mental development.

Casey Hopkins Ms. Kristen ENGL 101 9/16/15 On the Subway The Poem “On the Subway” by Sharon Old speaks on the ideals of social injustice through her use of literary techniques like Diction, Imagery Sharon Olds uses imagery throughout her poem to convey the difference between the African-American boy and the white woman. In the poem the speaker refers to the “murderous beams of the nation’s heart” and how he soaks up the beams like “black cotton”(24-25). The use of the word cotton is meant to refer to the way the nation relied on the cotton trade to maintain a strong economy.

On the Subway by Sharon Olds conveys that racial prejudice shouldn’t influence you to have bad perspective for different ethnicities. The author uses imagery, metaphors, and similes to express the responses of the speaker. The poem is about a woman who is worried that she might get robbed because she looks rich, and the boy, of black ethnicity, resembles a stereotype of a mugger. The author uses imagery to describe the type of clothing the boy is wearing.

Poets often bring together two bookending ideas in contrast to convey a broader view of the world. Sharon Olds is no different in “On the Subway.” In the poem, Olds places the opposites of black and white in a contained section of a much wider spectrum.

In the poem, "On the Subway," we understand that two different boys sit across each other on the subway. One being white, and the other being black. Both of the individuals differ in many ways, but come together on the ride in the train. Even though the black boy is more dominant, the experience for the white boy was surprising due to the fact that he was white. The black boy was described as a mean delinquent.

She is able to be on her own, without any assistance and it is time to say good bye. The poem ends in a sad emotional tone. Regardless of her daughter’s age of maturity, the mother was yet concerned. Consequently, the parent has a flashback when the daughter was a little girl.

By the end of this poem, the man has come to terms with the boy's

Which is the main struggle throughout this poem as the women cannot come to realization that her youth and beauty is fading. The mirror does not show this mist and reveals to the women all her blemishes and aging marks.

She doesn't seem hardened or sad, but seems devoted. The man is even convinced that the girl is far to old for her age and comments once, 'You run about, my little Maid, / Your limbs they are alive';

If twentieth-century studies of "Recitatif" focus primarily on extremes—the white and black ends of the binary—instead of plumbing the depths of the murky space in between, twenty-first century scholarship on "Recitatif" better explicates how the story works on our preconceptions about race. For instance, referencing postmodernist understandings of race. (Philadelphia: Univ.of Penn. Press, 2007)