Joseph: Winter

Sharon Olds uses the seasons, sometimes months, to help her overall analogy of her life and its ruins that was left after her husband explained that he was in love with another woman.  This winter season that is her second collection of poems in this work is used as a frost that comes over her.  She explains in her poem "Love" that how could it be that they were not in love?  She analyzes everything about her marriage even to the very beginning.  And then I think that she does a fantastic job using absolutely random and relevant facts.

I say that she uses random and relevant facts because it's true.  I don't know, after thirty years, that anyone would be thinking in their right mind at this point.  However, there are things that stick out to us—there are different specific things that our subconscious decides that it's something we have to remember.  Sharon brings forth some of these factors in her writing.  I think this adds the the mind set that she has when she is going through this heartbreak.

Heartbreak—that's something we talked about as a group, as well. We don't necessarily think that they got married because they were in love.  Of course, we're sure that they enjoyed each other to some extent and were romantic with it (obviously) but when she explains that she told her mother, it is almost as if the mother had been encouraging the marriage from the beginning. The woman was more heartbroken, it seemed as Sharon explained, than Sharon herself.  This was a big event that we talked about in our group meeting for this work.

It would make sense that she loved him logically.  I think that's why the poem "Love" is so prominent in this part.  It provides the over-analyzation of Sharon and her mind.  She might have married him and fallen in love with him because it was logical.  It was the right thing to do.

Unfortunately, I find a lot of myself in this articular section.  I analyze things such as this, and I will admit that I have gotten into relationships because it was the logical thing to do.  Because I liked them, but it was never really everything I really wanted.  I always wanted someone else more.

However, Sharon does try to keep him.  She loves him.  Perhaps, after the fact, she fell in love with him.  Perhaps she fell in love with him because he was no longer hers.  Because he was now leaving and she had to keep him somehow.  Regardless, the snow melted away to reveal something else quite beautiful, she says.

—Joseph