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SHARON OLDS
"There is something exciting to me about writing about something that I haven't written about before and that maybe I haven't read a lot of poems about.
. . . When I grew up there were so few poems about women from a woman's point of view, so few poems about children from a child's point of view."
Born in San Francisco in 1942, Sharon Olds was raised as a "hellfire Calvinist" in Berkeley, California. Her work has been praised for its courage, emotional power, and extraordinary physicality. She teaches in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University and is the State Poet of New York from 1998-2000.
"The Clasp"
She was four, he was one, it was raining, we had colds,
we had been in the apartment two weeks straight,
I grabbed her to keep her from shoving him over on his
face, again, and when I had her wrist
in my grasp I compressed it, fiercely, for a couple
of seconds, to make an impression on her,
to hurt her, our beloved firstborn, I even almost
savored the stinging sensation of the squeezing,
the expression, into her, of my anger,
"Never, never, again," the righteous
chant accompanying the clasp. It happened very
fast -- grab, crush, crush,
crush, release -- and at the first extra
force, she swung her head, as if checking
who this was, and looked at me,
and saw me -- yes, this was her mom,
her mom was doing this. Her dark,
deeply open eyes took me
in, she knew me, in the shock of the moment
she learned me. This was her mother, one of the
two whom she most loved, the two
who loved her most, near the source of love
was this.
What "in the shock of the moment" have you seen "near the source of love"?
Questions
1. How would you describe the family presented in the "The Clasp"? How is the daughter like or unlike her mother?
2. How does the information provided in the first two lines of "The Clasp" affect your response to the central event in the poem? What about the information provided in the third and fourth lines?
3. How does "The Clasp" introduce the poem differently from, say, "The Grab"?
Activities
1. With one or two others, read "The Clasp" aloud, listening to what different readers emphasize and paying particular attention to the contrast between how each naturally reads the "righteous chant" and the lines that follow it.
2. With a small group, act out Sharon Olds's "The Clasp" and Stanley Kunitz's "The Portrait." Discuss which was more challenging to act out. Discuss which was more shocking to experience.
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