High School Imagery in Old's Poem

Childhood is a mosaic of experiences - at least in terms of remembered youth. The mosaic only takes on meaning when pieced together and viewed from a distance. Very few people can actually witness their past from a distance, however, so the personality of youth often remains one of specifics seen only at the angle of remembrance. For this reason poetry is the ideal creative medium for attempts to express the childhood experience. Poetry shares the visual quality of childhood memories. The poet takes an experience and breaks down the moment into words and sounds, realities and metaphors. The poem bends memory. It is a technique-based, almost "scientific" dissection - but, still, the successful poem pricks 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 juxtaposition of pubescent sexuality into both physical and mathematical terms.

When I take my girl to the swimming party

I set her down among the boys. They tower and

bristle, she stands there smooth and sleek,

her math scores unfolding in the air around her.

Olds remembers something about being a teenager that most non-poets forget: the environment of their lives is the rhythm-and-response of school. Physicality of the animal sort is not gone - the boys "tower and bristle," her daughter is "smooth and sleek" - but the perfume these teenagers respond to is the scent of numbers

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assumes from the poem and his name, Hongo places raw nature at the center of his recollection of childhood experience - specifically, 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. More than Olds, who filters her remembrance of youth through an observation of her daughter and friends, Hongo attempts to recreate childhood experience using the scattershot, selective-memory technique (or non-technique) that children themselves employ. While Olds pursues her math-sex metaphor with relentless, adult design, Hongo's descriptions jump from moment to moment, without apparent regard for overall imagery. He has begun the poem with the intrusion of a natural force upon his family's life, but in the twenty-one remaining lines only three will remember nature as part of the story: ... the orchids, ferns and plumeria Of that greenhouse world behind the store ... ... the red ash covering the road. Specific references to nature aside, Hongo does create a mosaic of natural forces, using references to sound to underscore the physical sense of threat from the volcano.

Category: Literature - H