Literature Annotations
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Olds, Sharon |
| Genre | Poem |
| Keywords | Alcoholism, Disability, Family Relationships, Father-Daughter Relationship, Grief, Illness and the Family, Love, Suffering |
| Summary | This is a poem of acceptance and personal strength. The narrator has given up the effort to NOT be like her father, a self-pitying, "defeated" failure. She accepts him, she becomes him, she is transformed: "I /myself, he, I shined." She understands that fate planted her, like a tulip bulb, in that family, and she is now "sure of [her]rightful place."
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| Commentary | This is one of a number of poems in which Olds describes coming to terms with a father’s alcoholism, and with a troubled family life (see for example, in this database Late Poem to My Father, Of All the Dead That Have Come to Me, This Once). |
| Source | The Dead and the Living |
| Publisher | Knopf |
| Edition | 1984 |
| Place Published | New York |
| Annotated by | Aull, Felice |
| Date of Entry | 02/09/94 |
| Last Revised | 08/21/06 |