Sex Without Love-Sharon Olds

  I did not like this poem. It kind of grossed me out, but maybe that’s the intention, given that the narrator doesn’t like or understand the idea of loveless sex. However, it’s not the concept of loveless sex that bothers me, it’s the comparisons and certain word choices made throughout the poem. I despised lines two through eight, which say “Beautiful as dancers, / gliding over each other like ice-skaters / over the ice, fingers hooked / inside each other’s bodies, faces / red as steak, wine, wet as the / children at birth whose mothers are going to / give them away.” We talked a bit about it in class, but the ice-skating part is odd; it says ‘gliding’ over each other, which is a lot better than saying something like, I don’t know, running each other over with blades, but it’s still unpleasant to think about. I think that the comparison is meant to be subtly unsettling; the next segment is questionable as well, describing fingers as “hooked inside each other’s bodies”. ‘Hooked’ makes it sound like something painful is happening, much like the ice-skating. I think the word choice is intended to be borderline negative; painting these occurrences in a negative light helps demonize loveless sex. As for the comparison of red faces to steak and wine, then leading from wine into blood and childbirth and the orphaning of an unwanted child...yikes. Something about “faces red as steak” was deeply disturbing to me; I didn’t like the mental image built from sex, meat, and wine, or the way it transitioned perfectly to childbirth. I agree with Victoria; Sharon Olds must have gone through Something when she wrote this.

I will never look at you without Remembering

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