Comparison of Two Poems

In comparing and contrasting the poems "The One Girl at the Boys Party" by Sharon Olds and Garrett Hongo's "The Hongo Store/29 Miles Volcano/Hilo, Hawaii," one notices immediately that both works treat the subject of childhood. In so doing, each poem approaches the subject from a different perspective in terms of technique. The figures of speech, voice, symbols and so forth are put together in each poem to make effects that have dissimilar goals. At the same time, both poems treat childhood through the filter of memory. In the study that follows, Olds' and Hongo's differing poetic treatments of childhood will be dissected - and found to present a coherent sense of that experience and the memory of it.

Childhood in both poems is treated in terms of remembered youth - and the memory only takes on meaning when pieced together and viewed from a distance. Poetry shares the visual quality of childhood memories. Both poems take an experience and break down the moment into words and sounds, realities and metaphors. These poems "bend" memory to fit their own specific needs. It is a technique-based, almost "scientific" dissection - but, still, the success of these two poems draws from the observer an appreciative recognition.

In "The One Girl at the Boys Party," Sharon Olds' 1983 poem on her teenage daughter's coming-of-age, the recognition comes from the presentation of teenage sexuality in both physical and mathematical terms.

When I take my girl to the swimming party

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th to have a mother hand her own daughter over to the urges of teenage sexuality - and this poem does not give in to the temptation. The daughter's mathematical "come-on" turn with the boys at the swimming pool is only temptation, never seduction. How could it be? It is all performed under Mom's all-seeing eye. Where Sharon Olds' poem breaks down childhood experience into a high school metaphor where natural impulse is represented by numbers, the experience of memory shifts to the opposite end of the poetic effort in Garrett Hongo's 1982 autobiographical poem "The Hongo Store/29 Miles Volcano/Hilo, Hawaii." An indigenous Hawaiian or Asian-Hawaiian one assumes from the poem and his name, Hongo places raw nature at the center of his poem's recollection of childhood experience - specifically, that raw nature is represented by a volcano: My parents felt those rumblings Coming deep from the earth's belly, Thudding like the bell of the Buddhist Church. Tremors in the ground swayed the bathinette Where I lay squalling in soapy water. Unlike in Olds' poem, where remembrance of youth is captured through a mother/narrator's precise observation of her daughter and friends, "The Hongo Store" attempts to recreate childho

Category: Literature - C