Poem Response

The poem “Rite of Passage” by Sharon Olds is a simple poem that both shocks you and saddens you, all while providing an insight to a common place occurrence. It speaks about her son who is having a birthday party. Her son, who is turning seven, has his friends over whom immediately start sizing each other up by saying who they could beat up. They threaten each other and near the end of the poem: “We could easily kill a two-year-old, he says in his clear voice. The other men agree they clear their throats like Generals, they relax and get down to playing war, celebrating my son’s life” (Olds).This poem shocks you because seven and six year old boys are deciding they could kill a two year old. However this simply comes because men no matter how young they are feel that they have to assert themselves in a physical way and thus say things that sound unreasonable or shocking. This also is insightful for the very same reason and yet it also shows how much a mother takes in and how she feels when she hears her son say things that he doesn’t truly understand.

                The second poem gives off the feel of someone being brutally honest about their feelings. The poem speaks of how his letter home will have the marks of war on it, and how it was only during a lull in the battle that he was able to write part of his letter home. It makes you feel sad to realize that a soldier’s life is really just spaces between battles they are fighting. Yet it also gives you a glimpse into what being in battle is like because he describes the different sensations and things that he is doing. As an example he says: “I tell her how Pvt. Bartle says, offhand, that war is just us making little pieces of metal pass through each other” (Powers).This tells us what he is currently hearing and what another soldier thinks. I really liked its simplicity and its brutal honesty about what he was going to write home about.

Olds, Sharon. Rite of Passage. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=176440 September 10, 2010

Powers, Kevin. Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=182821. September 10, 2010.