the musk these colts and filly respond to, like Rapunzel's hair, is the scent of numbers, grades and
Here is where the mosaic-like fragmentation of experience serves the poet well - and allows her to present the non-poet observer with an opened window into their own experiences of youth. The majority of persons will remember the high school classroom, math class in particular, for its droning dullness, a dullness punctuated only occasionally by the sudden tension of a pop quiz or long-feared examination. Math is the ultimate high school symbol for academic accomplishment: one either can or cannot do it, there is no "faking" the essay or fudging the question of grammar with the excuse of "expressing" oneself.
Much like sex and the teenage passion for it: there is much boring talk but only one do-or-don't proof of proficiency. This is the tension of youth, a tension Olds captures with a wry, erotic calculation:
sealed, a factor of one, and she will
their legs, two each, and the curves of their sexes,
one each, and in her head she'll be doing her
If the memory of youth is a refracted experience, the prism of poetry breaks it down into even more specific colors. Sharon Olds has chosen high school imagery for her tinting of the experience and, while the physicality of young
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