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.
Math is 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 mosaic, fragmented experience, poetry shapes 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 animals and the enticing perfume of numbers are her earth tones, a few strokes from other colors on the palette of high school experience are added to make those primary memories more vivid. First there is the simplest, most essential of "tools" that makes her daughter necessary to the boys:
her ponytail will hang its pencil lead
Necessity, however, isn't always desire - so in
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