Summary Of I Go Back To May 1937 By Sharon Olds

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Sharon Olds wrote this poem to demonstrate her perspective of her parents wedding. In this poem, she shows her dislike towards her parents’ marriage. This commentary will discuss how Sharon Olds displays her disliking regarding her parents’ marriage, through this poem. The first thing that can be seen in this poem to the reader is that it has a free-verse structure and does not have rhyme scheme. The next aspect of the poem that would be seen by the reader is the title which is “I Go Back to May 1937”, this already gives the reader the impression that the author is going to be reminiscing about something in her past, in the case of this poem she was reflecting upon an event for which she had not been present for, her parents wedding. Sharon Olds begins portraying vivid images into the readers mind from the first few lines. She begins the poem with “I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges”, this shows that her parents come from a privileged background, because they were able to afford to go to university in 1937. Then she brings the readers focus to her father walking out of the college she uses very vivid imagery to describe this “the red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood” the use of the word blood in this early line gives the reader a hint of what happens later on. The use of the word blood also gives an insight of the authors attitude, because it has a negative connotation, blood is a frequently used term to describe forms of injury and pain