Blog Post #2

I found "That Year" by Sharon Olds to be a very dark, yet interesting poem.  It seems that the poem is coming from the point of view of an older girl/young woman that is so tramatized by her abusive childhood that she compares it to the Holocaust.  This author obviously didn't go through the Holocaust herself (she was born in America in 1942 and the Holocaust ended in 1945) but she feels as if she went through something similiar in her childhood to the Holocaust victims, or at least she is mentally affected as so.  She seems to be empathasizing with the Holocaust victims; putting herself in their shoes by remembering the pain and horror inflicted upon her by her father.  I found the line "and in Social Studies, we came at last/ to Auschwitz, I recognized it/ like my father's face, the face of the guard/ turning away--or worse yet/ turning toward me" to probably be the strongest and most haunting in the poem.  Although I haven't had the greatest relationship with my father, I still can't even imagine comparing him to one of the monsters that was a part of the Holocaust.  I always thought of these guards as soul-less, evil human beings that displayed no emotion or mercy for anyone.  The speaker's father must have been incrediably abusive--physically, emotionally, and most likely even sexually.  The question of sexual abuse is another part in this poem that I found interesting, since she mentions the characteristics of her going through puberty.  "That was the year/ I started to bleed" and "the shame of vomitted buttermilk/ down the sweater with its shame of new breasts."  The fact that she mentions her "new breasts" as shameful seems to me that someone must have gave her a reason to be embarrassed of them.

 I found another poem of Sharon Olds that also speaks of paternal sexual abuse, titled "My Father Speaks to Me From the Dead."  I find this poem even much more disturbing than "That Year."  It comes from the point of view of the speaker's father who describes his daughter's body.  "I love your- what can I call it,/ between your legs, we never named it, the/ glint and purity of its curls" just goes to show the extremity of the incest feelings this father has for his daughter.  (The rest of the poem is here: https://www.aprweb.org/poem/my-father-speaks-me-dead.)  I think that Sharon Olds must be very brave and have a strong stomach to talk about these gruesome and disturbing topics.