The Feelings (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Sharon Olds
- First Published: 1991
- Type of Work: Elegy
- Genres: Poetry, Elegy
- Subjects: Parents and children, Emotions, Fathers, Death or dying
The Poem
“The Feelings” is a forty-one-line poem in free verse, artistically recounting the poet’s feelings immediately following her father’s death. It is highly personal and familial, as are many of Sharon Olds’s poems. Written in the first person and past tense, the experience seems fixed, inevitable, available to retrospective analysis. The poem begins in a hospital room, the poet watching as an intern “listened” to her father’s stopped heart, and concludes with the poet contemplating the meaning of life the following morning as her husband lies atop her....
[The entire page is 1501 words long]
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