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Sharon Olds is an American poet whose literary works were noted for their “powerful, often erotic, imagery of the body”. Olds was born in San Francisco, California in 1942 and grew up in an abusive family, which, most likely, inspired her writing style. Among her notable works that appealed to many audiences were ‘Satan Says’ where Olds described her sexuality in a daring manner and ‘The Dead and the Living’ wherein she examined the life and death under the context of domesticity. The ‘Photograph of a Girl,’ is one of Old’s poems that describe the conflict between life and death. The title of the poem is not very captivating, but the poem itself is quite controversial. While examining a photograph of a Russian girl, Old’s explored the contradictions and the irony of the girl’s experience. The central conflict in the poem is that while the girl suffers from extreme hunger, her body is progressively producing the element of life as she undergoes puberty. As observed by Olds, while the girl leans on a sack, dying from starvation, “deep in her body the ovaries let out her first eggs, golden as drops of grain”. It is remarkable how Olds make a vivid description of the girl’s body with intensity and sensuality, which is ironic because, at the moment, the girl is suffering from extreme hunger. This contradiction creates a plethora of emotion from the reader. For some reason, there is something sensual in her description of the girl in the poem, which makes the poem quite erotic. It is also notable how Olds use free style in writing her poems, particularly the ‘Photograph of a Girl.’ Unlike traditional poems that have certain rhyme and rhythm, Olds freestyle verses makes her poems quite unconventional and modern. Old’s ‘Photograph of a Girl’ is remarkable for its candor and vitality. Old’s show her versatility as the writer of the poem as she was able to capture one’s imagination by picturing the girl in her gory vulnerabilities and her beautiful vitality.
Works Cited
Encyclopedia Britannica. Sharon Olds. 2016. June 2016 <http://www.britannica.com/biography/Sharon-Olds>.
Olds, S. Photograph of the Girl. 1979. June 2016 <https://muse.jhu.edu/article/411533/pdf>.
