American Women Poets
..."The Dead and the Living" and are entitled "The Eye" and "Poem to My Husband from my Fathers Daughter."
Olds is a contemporary writer who expertly maneuvers her work through modern life. In this particular collection, written in 1983, she takes us on an explorative journey through both the past and present of family life. I will explore the role of the family in both these poems and how, through the collection, a realization and acceptance is reached.
I felt it fitting to choose these two poems, as the first one is taken from "Poems for the living" and the second from "Poems for the dead." This collection of poems explores the role of family within society, how through its dysfunction we can learn to exist as a person despite the odds. The collection helps Olds' explore the truth about family and how we learn to eventually accept them, one way or another.
The poems, according to Contemporary literary Criticism move from "The public to the private as the collection turns from the dead towards the living." (Gaffrey 121)
What struck me about these two poems in particular is the universal truths they reveal, firstly in "The Eye," how one learns to hate, and then resent and in "A Poem to my Husband from My Father's Daughter," how a woman come to terms with her father's legacy.
The first poem I will discuss is from the first portion of the book and as I analyze the piece, it is easy to see the distinction between the tone of the two poems. "The Eye" begins by saying: "Bad Grandfather wouldn't feed us. He turned the lights out when we tried to read"(19).
This line is a stark image that draws a clear picture of the pain this child associated with this man. As the poem continues, we are invited to see more "Snapshots of the darker side of family life" (Gaffrey 22). According to Brian Dillon in his essay the poems speaker is responding both as a...
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