Sharon Olds poetic style is very much similar to that of Edgar Allan Poe. She uses the technique of human emotions in order to cement the meaning of poems to present the range of human emotions so reflect her writing style. Poe on the other hand makes the best use of punctuations along with sentence structure and word choice. However, there lies a huge similarly in between these two poets that can be seen in their works. The best contrast can be used for Olds’ “I Go Back To May 1937" and Poe’s “Annabel Lee”.
Old’s poem was written in 1987 that was published with many other anthologies along with other books. Through her poem, she describes that she would go back to time and prevent her parents from meeting one another (Boshkoff-Johnson). Having said that, Olds cannot go back to the past and change what has been done, therefore she expresses her sadness. Through her description, she contradicts herself by talking about her poems though the medium of sharp imagery and future events that are yet to come.
Poe’s piece of poetry was written long back in 1849. It describes the love between the speaker and Annabel Lee. The main theme of the poem is that love can transcend death and nothing can keep two souls apart. Poe though this imagery explains that when two people love each other, they are meant to be together even if not physically (Halliburton). Each stanza of the poem is shown through a medium of rhyme and by explaining their relationship, Poe explains that in time their love kept on getting stronger.
Reference:
Boshkoff-Johnson, Emily. "“All the long gone darlings”: Using confessional poetry as a lens to view the Western cultural symbolical formations of the female body." Psychoanalytic Psychology 32.2 (2015): 352.
Halliburton, David. Edgar Allen Poe: A Phenomenological View. Princeton University Press, 2015.
