Joseph: January—December

This collection of poetry is amazing.  There is something about Sharon Olds' raw emotion.  She begins the work off with this section of poems (there are six sections hence the bog title)titled "January—December" and she tells the audience about her experience with her husband leaving her.  In our group meetings, we decided that she was a bit in shock and disbelief.  After thirty years of marriage, I would be, too.  At least, that's what I would think.  I'm not even thirty yet, and the only thing that has been there all of my years is my family, and if they left, I don't even know what would happen.  I wouldn't know what to do.  I think that Sharon was this way with her soon-to-be ex-husband. 

He cheated on her and she felt as if she should try to fix it.  There were nights, she explains, where they had sexual relations even after her husband told her that he was cheating on her and in love with someone else.  Our group took to this as that she was reaching out in every way she knew to bring him back.  Sharon is very analytical of her own life and she feels as if it was her that made him go elsewhere for something new and exciting.

Sharon feels in this part that if she had given him the sexual relationship that he wanted, he would not have had to go out and find another one.  It just so happens that her husband fell in love with this new woman and he is now leaving.

An interesting fact that we noted was that after he told her, she still insisted on going with him to his work Christmas party.  She explains to him that she is still his wife, and she will accompany him to this party.  Regardless, she knows of the new woman, and she just so happens to be at the work party.  We get that Sharon does not wish to do anything other than keep what she knows, in this point.

-Joseph