Sharon Olds’ poem, “Last Night” & Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy”

I felt uncomfortable reading Sharon Olds’ poem, “Last Night.” This poem was written in 1996, a year before her divorce. For me, she was trying to save her marriage by writing bold. You can say I’m old school. She says that “love is almost the hardest thing to write about” (828). I don’t see it that way. Look at the world literature. One the biggest themes is about love, and those stories and poems remain unshakable and touch our hearts as time goes by. However, Olds’ way of writing love is through writing about her sex experiences. Unfortunately, I am old enough not to be curious and am not a person who wants to be snooping in others’ sexual lives. Her poems’ writing style is very short prose, not poetry for me. I would enclose what I think about Olds’ “Last Night” using Sylvia Plath words: “I believe that one should be able to control and manipulate experiences… with an informed and intelligent mind” (1080). Olds is narcissistic for me.

I felt sorry for Sylvia Plath when I first read her poem, “Daddy.” I wondered what kind of abuse she got from her father who was an entomologist and a professor of biology at Boston University. It overwhelms me that hurt can be so deeply imprinted in one’s soul even when one was a little child. However, after I read all the criticism on this poem collected in our text book, all I can think is that I might not be capable of writing or reading. Worst of all, I might not even be capable to think. How come I missed so many details in the poem? Those critical interpretations impress me, and I couldn’t come up with any disagreement with any of the opinions. I am doomed. Why in the world do I think of getting an English degree? I quit! This poem depressed me.