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Sharon Olds’ poem, Sex without Love, quite passionately expresses the poet's attitude toward loveless sex as a cold and hurtful act. She accomplishes this through her use of various poetic techniques which evoke clear images in the reader. Her opening words, How do they do it,..., do not simply offer question, but carry a negative connotation of the speaker shaking her head and throwing up her hands in a disgusted manner. Reminiscent of a mother looking at her errant teenager and exclaiming, How could you do such a thing?! She then throws us off the path by referring to her characters as beautiful as dancers.....maybe the initial impression was wrong? After all, that implied grace, and the same beauty we see in ice skaters, could lead us to think that this act might be quite lovely. Then Olds returns us to her reality offering the coolness of ice and the slight detachment that professional ice skaters exhibit as they glide almost without seeming to touch the surface. The image of fingers hooked inside each other's bodies is so clinical and conveys that detached feeling once again. There is no implication of gentle touch, as she continues to describe the participants. The similes used to describe the overheated lovers, faces red as steaks and wet as the children at birth also carry the same theme. By comparing a lover's face to a piece of cold, raw beef she leaves us with the image of these people using each other like pieces of meat...weren't many pick-up places referred to as 'meat markets'?
Approximate Word count = 1014
Approximate Pages = 4.1
(250 words per page double spaced)
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