The poem's title, "The Possessive," is almost in contradiction to the main theme of the poem, which is the need to let go.

And the poem went something like: It's what it says on the post office. And that was shocking—well, I was twenty years old!

I wasn't a radical at all. And it's physical. It's all in one motion. Eliot Prizes. There's a lot of stuff in it, about the life of my soul and heart. It's where I discover what I think and feel and make something of it. And then we just start the dialogue—them with each other, me with them.

And each poem is edited enough, as far as I'm concerned. The Goldwater workshop? Hmmph!

Educators go through a rigorous application process, and every answer they submit is reviewed by our in-house editorial team. And Shakespeare, always. Then others were added. Some of them I change, and then in another printing I have to change them back, because it was obvious that someone was doing something literary here in order not to use too many clichés. So these kids, 20-35, form a community.

The facts: Olds is 66, has a grown-up son and daughter and was married for 32 years, until just over 10 years ago, to a psychiatrist. Winner of several prestigious awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award, Olds is known for writing intensely personal, emotionally scathing poetry which graphically depicts family life as well as global political events. There's that. I was afraid I would censor myself. I'd had enough of fiction. There are many nature descriptions. And then there was Caterpillar magazine. You think poetry has to get out there? She also helped found NYU’s outreach program for residents of Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island and for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. That's a line I remember from somewhere.

If it's doing, not what we want it to do, but what it seems to want to do. I only noticed years later that they were all men. We can give each other that.

It's a ballpoint pen—it doesn't scratch and stick on the paper. Olds: I wouldn't have dared to imagine that I could have a life as a writer.

Now, the change that happened with me was that, for the first ten years, I wrote in one rush and didn't rewrite.

and who are great—write with our graduate writing students.

They're not going to kill me or put me in a permanent fire because I'm doing it this way. I started writing and crossing out, then bringing it back down, getting the right word, a delicate balance, going fast enough that I don't lose the "hmm," not letting the wrong word stand. I mean, the book is all together. We know we're like each other in some way. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe, he woman many regard as America's greatest living poet lives in a sprawling Upper West Side apartment where, for the past 40 years, she has written in a rocking chair overlooking the Hudson.

Olds: No. The children on the oncology ward—who are kids! Then I married. Their poems accrue. You started that.

Olds: Yes. In the taxi alone, home from the airport, I could not believe you were gone.

Laskey: In terms of your students, what's teachable? And I said, "Yes." April 15, 2014 — Leave a comment. What exactly is the “rite of passage” to which Sharon Olds' poem, "Rites of Passage" refers? What does the poem "On the Subway" by Sharon Olds mean from a historical point of view? © Academy of American Poets, 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038. I went through a period of trying to think of a pseudonym, so they could get out in the world and try their chances. Sharon Olds Poetry: American Poets Analysis, https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/possessive?s=t. You give a gift. There's a charm in that, maybe even literally a charm, like a good luck weirdness. First, we start by trying to identify what the poem is like. I seek out an order.

There's a brat in me who likes doing it my own way, knowing that I'm supposed to be doing it the other way. Olds: Take your vitamins. Most of them will not change.

what is the significant human experience in the story? So it was very clear to me that Hugh and all the others were real poets. Laskey: But you didn't give these poems to these people? In 1968 the Women's Movement in New York City—especially among a lot of women I knew—was very alive. A long time ago I wouldn't use them, because I would like to have readers who have never gone to university or even high school. Olds: I would hate to imagine living without it.

I've written in the same way for probably twenty or thirty years—taking it down at a rate that is not slow. Then I read some George Oppen. Olds: What we can do is be companions to each other, so that we know what each other has been doing. I put in stickers. What does the poem "On the Subway" by Sharon Olds mean from a historical point of view? I love color too, and it lifts my spirits.

Laskey: When you write the poems, do you think of them as a book? Olds: I don't know. My palm kept creeping over the smooth plastic to find your strong meaty little hand and squeeze it, find your narrow thigh in the Olds: Well, I was writing fiction in high school and college. © 2020 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Start your 48-hour free trial to unlock this answer and thousands more. That take the poem off?

I had these strong ambitions to enter the bourgeoisie if I could. It is time for the proverbial apron strings to be cut. So I go through whatever it is, galleys, proofs, and I begin to circle words that are happening more than once, twice, three times. Laskey: So what does it do for you, writing poems? Something.

Olds: I remember, though it's so long ago, once I finished The Father, I thought, "I won't be so scared to die in a plane crash now." In the first line, the poet refers to "my daughter" and then immediately draws attention to the fact that she cannot think of her daughter as a possession or has somebody for whom she has the right to make decisions for. Laskey: That's important to you. My first child was born in 1969. But I look back, and did I always long to speak to other people? Olds: Yes, I think that most of the poets I know lack self-confidence. That was something I was meant to do. Laskey: What happened then with your own poetry? In high school: Auden, E. E. Cummings, and Whitman. You couldn't just write down what someone else had made up. So that we're trying to really get at how different we are, how everyone has a different voice and life.

In terms of family loyalty, it was clear to me these couldn't go out there.

But I didn't know that's why I was doing it—to try to imitate what it feels like to be alive, which is, for me, not end-stopped. It has to do with sexual love.

We know what we've been doing. The clarity of that. I use different colored pens.

starTop subjects are Literature, Social Sciences, and History, starTop subjects are Literature, History, and Law and Politics, starTop subjects are Literature, History, and Science. And yet, each one of us knows that we have some kind of gift that we're born with, that has to do with language and making stuff. Olds: This morning, I was having a hard time trying to interpret and record and write about the gulls' cries. Olds: It's something about the visual and the way it sits on the page with space around it.

I said, "Yes, you can tell," pointing to my handwriting. The title of the poem relates to the theme because it is a mother's natural urge to be possessive over her child. Enjoy eNotes ad-free and cancel anytime. That was when I learned that to write a poem, you had to make it up.

Excerpt from One Secret Thing, published by Knopf in September, 'I've tried to make sense of my life ... make a small embodiment of ordinary life, from a daughter's, wife's, mother's point of view', Apparently personal ... Sharon Olds in New York. I became pregnant. Do you want to give some advice? Sharon Olds: When I was eight, we were asked to write a poem, and after I handed mine in the teacher called me to her desk—which was not an unusual experience for me. I said, "Yes, you can tell," pointing to my handwriting. And I said, "Yes." Sharon Olds: When I was eight, we were asked to write a poem, and after I handed mine in the teacher called me to her desk—which was not an unusual experience for me. Most of the poets I know accrue. Laskey: How about actually writing the poems. I'll find out. I was really in distress from them. Because then its music will be calling out for other words that match it. I was writing in a way that felt comfortable to me, except that I had to ride over the end of the line. She now divides her time between Manhattan and her … I had had it with angels and demons who (if your faith was strong enough) you believed were in the room with you.

Yes. Laskey: So that it wasn't like the Hymns?

This poem is all about a mother who realizes that, at some point, she is going to have to let her daughter go. Glenda Shank (2/20/2006 11:22:00 AM). But then there are others—for children, for high school students. I loved writing, and I wrote stories and poems. I couldn't interpret them—either "I'm hungry," "That's mine," "Get out of here," or "Mommy." I've always written in lines, and I didn't know until I was fifty-five that my craft was the craft of the Hymns I had grown up singing. And then later, weeks later, we start offering suggestions. Then I realized I wanted to go out with them. Exercise.

But I do remember understanding that I had never questioned that men had all the important jobs. It's a love poem to the postal delivery people. His poetry was mysterious to me.

My favorite by Sharon Olds. And then I began to write my own stuff—love poems, mostly. Olds: I did start one at Goldwater Hospital. I go through the whole manuscript. I don't want them to look at it and, if there's a weird word in the first line, throw it across the room, as I might in the same position. Olds: There was a change, at one point. But we know that we've been writing. I began to slow down.

Let them do it the other way. I liked that. She is the author of Satan Says, The Dead and the Living, Odes, and Stag’s Leap — for which she won the Pulitzer and T.S. What I liked was that then the little phrases like "of the," "and the," "for the," were at the end of the line, like tips of twigs, and the nouns were down the left-hand margin, like a trunk. Olds: I would say my early influences for good writing were the Psalms, and for bad writing were the Hymns. And so I put it in my notebook, and I felt much better. Then here's a place where you could speak. We pass it on. I love odd words. Laskey: That are wrong? I got less worried about censoring myself and I realized I just don't write first drafts that are good enough.

That's the first memory that popped into my mind. Laskey: You thought you were a fiction writer? By letting her go, I mean that she is going to have to allow her daughter to become independent, make her own decisions, and go her own way in life. Love, Sharon. And then Clayton Eshleman and Gary Snyder. I love this part of putting a book together. This is an excellent capturing of the emotions of an abused woman and the resolution to keep her own ddaughter safe.

Laskey: That's an engaged view of poetry. Before I give a manuscript to my editor, I run a "cliché round-robin" on it.

Four beats, the quatrains, that form. Olds: I loved writing. Olds: I want to not seem "phoney-baloney.". Analysis Of Sharon Olds And Parents's Day 814 Words | 4 Pages.

Laskey: Or was he published in Caterpillar? But I knew that I had a sticker with me of Curious George on a beach with a seagull.

Has the way you do that changed? Laskey: Do you have a favorite collection? We owe that to the community.

(The entire section contains 4 answers and 990 words.). Our summaries and analyses are written by experts, and your questions are answered by real teachers. I just didn't know what was going on. I didn't ever think that I would get to a point where I would write poems I would be willing to send out into the world.

They have notebooks. You are given a gift.