A Poem by Sharon Olds, review by Mahnaz Badihian
Poem: The Moment the Two Worlds Meet by Sharon Olds from the poetry collection The Gold Cell
This poem starts with a very strong and distinct sentence that makes the reader curious.
“That’s the moment I always think of.”
....
Poem: The Moment the Two Worlds Meet by Sharon Olds from the poetry collection The Gold Cell
This poem starts with a very strong and distinct sentence that makes the reader curious.
“That’s the moment I always think of.”
The poet, Sharon Olds, is about to share a very memorable moment in her life that she can never forget and it does not take too long before she tells us what the moment is that she is referring to.
“When the slick, whole body comes out of me.”
She gets to the point without any hesitation and without the use of indirect language. She tells us about the birth of a child from her body. Olds then goes on throughout the poem telling us what she felt and saw during those moments when a human being, her child, was being born. Throughout the poem Olds uses many strong metaphors and images, as if she is painting the scene so that we as the reader can visualize the birth of that baby moment by moment. We as the reader vicariously give birth through the poet’s words. She describes the way the child is being taken out in mechanical language,
“When they pull it out, not pull it but steady it
as it pushes forth, not catch it but keep their
hands under it as it pulses out.”
In this section she is playing with words, push and pull, to create the action of the actual birth and then the action is over in the form of pulsation. She follows with a very touching sentence,
“They are the first to touch it. “
It made me realize, for the first time, that actually nurses and doctors had the chance to touch my babies first before me. Are they stealing this moment from me?
Her use of images like, “shines” “glistens” “thick liquid” in part of the poem describes the wet surface of amniotic fluid that covers the new born. The poems continues, moment by moment as it happens,
“That’s the moment, while it is sliding, the limbs
compressed close to body, the arms
bent like a crab’s rosy legs.”
This image of the crabs rosy legs is so strong; you immediately can imagine those crab legs even before you think of the legs of a new born. This metaphor is so striking that you will always associate crabs legs with the position of a new born baby’s leg. Every line is a detailed observation of the process of giving birth. Let us look at the following line,
”Juiced bluish sphere of the baby is
sliding between the two worlds,
wet, like sex, it is sex.”
In this one line it provides the reader with the texture and how it feels at the exact moment of birth. The amazing feeling and joy when you are almost done with the pain and contractions and you’re long wait for that little face is finally over. It is so enjoyable that she calls it sex. She uses the two worlds metaphor to describe her legs and also the baby’s two worlds before and after birth; uterus and outside of the uterus.
Although this poem expresses a woman’s personal description toward giving birth to a child, it does not give us any sense of motherhood. This poem is a simple, mechanical description of the child bearing process. In fact, it is so sterile that she chooses not to mention the sex of the baby enhancing the sense of a generic birth. Even with the expression of a sexual sensation at birth, she does not expand on her feelings towards the baby, just the birth.
.......
The Moment the Two Worlds Meet
By Sharon Olds, from the book “The Gold Cell”
That’s the moment I always think of-when the
slick, whole body comes out of me,
when the pull it out, not pull it but steady it
as it pushes forth, not catch it but keep their
hands under it as it pulses out,
they are the first to touch it,
and it shines, it glistens with the thick liquid on it.
that’s the moment, while it’s sliding, the limbs
compressed close to the body, the arms
bent like a crab’s rosy legs, the
thighs closely packed plums in heavy syrup, the
legs folded like the white wings of a chicken-
that is the center of life, that moment when the
juiced bluish sphere of the baby is
sliding between the two worlds,
wet, like sex, it is sex
it is my life opening back and back
as you’d strip the reed from the bud, not strip it but
watch it thrust so it peels itself and the
flower is there, severely folded, and
then it begins to open and dry
but by then the moment is over,
they wipe off the grease and wrap the child in a blanket and
hand it to you entirely in this world.