Olds, Sharon : Of All the Dead That Have Come to Me, This Once

Literature Annotations

Genre	Poem
Keywords	Child Abuse, Children, Death and Dying, Family Relationships, Ordinary Life, Suffering, Time, Trauma
Summary	I have never written against the dead, says the narrator, but in this instance, the death of her grandfather, she must. Why? Because, ominously, "he taught my father/ how to do what he did to me." The poem moves from a startlingly literal image of nursing the nameless dead, to the pocketwatch which was sent as a memento after this particular death, to specific personal memories of mistreatment at the hands of the grandfather. The narrator cannot regret this death.
Commentary	This is one of a number of poems in which Olds peels off the layers of abusive behavior passed down from generation to generation. Here she only hints at what is a major focus of other poems, the father, and a disastrous family life (see for example Beyond Harm, Late Poem to My Father, and Waste Sonata, all annotated in this database).
Source	The Dead and the Living
Publisher	Knopf
Edition	1984
Place Published	New York
Annotated by	Aull, Felice
Date of Entry	02/09/94