"How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love?"
Sharon Olds starts her poem with a very mundane question and proceeds to answer it in the next 23 lines not using symbols but inspired irony. She writes poetry about something that lost its poetry. In our society sex and love became almost independent of each other. "How do they do it...." Not that I dare give an answer to this question but I see how in our modern society we are more disconnected from our own emotional selves, the vicious circles continuing from generation to generation. Romance became over-rated. Sex became just another activity. Olds using interesting similes associating sex with endurance sports such as running. I love her play with contrasts. The emotional is cold as ice and the physical is hot and sweaty.
"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."
Olds uses a beautiful simile at the beginning of this stanza, the lovers looking like dancers, gracious and beautiful. However she ends on a different note comparing their faces with those ones of the unwanted babies resulted from the loveless union. "Beautiful as dancers" is indeed a sarcastic remark.
The ending of the poem is a sad conclusion. They are alone. They are missing on an important emotional and spiritual connection furthering away from the truth, from the essence.
The ending of the poem is a sad conclusion. They are alone. They are missing on an important emotional and spiritual connection furthering away from the truth, from the essence.
"they know they are alone
(...)just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time."
Florina,
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you're saying in this blog about Olds " Sex Without Love." I agree that in our modern society, the attitudes that people have now when it comes to the topic of having sex are more liberal. Many people believe that they don't need to love someone to have sex with them or vice versa. Many people don't see the importance of the emotional as well as the physical connection to someone else when choosing to have sex with them. Many don't care for it. Everyone chooses to have sex for different reasons, some for love, some for pleasure, some don't even have a reason.We live in a society that doesn't enforce traditional values as much so people tend to develop these attiudes that sex without love is ok. anyhow who am i to judge? i am not god or above anyone else. I feel like the poem was interesting but everyone does have their own agenda or their own beliefs when it comes to having sex so both sides of the table are understood but I say to each it's own.
I agree with your point of view about sex in the poem too Florina, sex nd love are getting seperted as the years go by. Many people do it as a hobby now a days and not to show love. My father would always joke around and say before women used to get pregnant if you touched there elbows, but today its more out there. With the acquisition of condoms and more birth control, its obvious why people have more sex without love, the society advertise to have sex.
ReplyDeleteYes, on the right track, here, though I don't know that I'd say the opening imagery is sarcastic--i.e., the image does have a real, admirable beauty, but a sterile one... so the attitude seems ambiguous, at once admiring and disturbing, as the critics note....
ReplyDeleteVery well said. I to feel like sex has lost its lust and true passion on a emotional and spirtiual connection you share with one person. Your souls suppose to connect on the same level as your body, mind and motions are intune with each other like one heart beat beating as one. Finally, we can all learn from this poem and society as a whole as Olds brings to light the true dark side of "How do they do it, the ones who make love without love?".Do you also think that contraception has play a big role through out each generation that cause the disconnect with love and just making it a sex?
ReplyDeleteThank you all for your thoughtful and detailed comments! CQ asked me: "Do you also think that contraception has play a big role through out each generation that cause the disconnect with love and just making it a sex?". I think contraception is very necessary and saved many lives. I personally believe that the disconnection comes from more psychological factors. There isn't just one specific answer and different reasons are more prevalent than others depending on society. The individual emotional balance and wholeness is a difficult thing to achieve and if we are not connected with our own selves we can't connect with other people at a deeper emotional level. However, we are still part of the animal kingdom and function on impulses : rage, sexual drive....So the disconnection is imminent.
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