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Literature Annotations

Olds, Sharon Beyond Harm

	On-Line Text
Genre	Poem
Keywords	Child Abuse, Death and Dying, Family Relationships, Father-Daughter Relationship, Illness and the Family, Love, Suffering, Survival, Time
Summary	The poem expresses the devastation that parental abusiveness inflicts and the rationalizations its recipients adopt for emotional survival. In a perverse way, childhood mistreatment by her father meant the narrator was being given his attention. His death has guaranteed that the loving relationship which she had with him at the end of his life is safe from harm. So precarious did she believe his love to be that she feared even now to offend him: "he could / re-skew my life."
Commentary	This is from the collection of poems written by Olds about a father's terminal illness and death, and retrospectively, about a life together (see also in this database The Waiting, The Pulling, The Dead Body, Waste Sonata).
Source	The Father
Publisher	Knopf
Edition	1992
Place Published	New York
Annotated by	Aull, Felice
Date of Entry	02/09/94
Last Revised	02/21/08