English 359:201: The Poem “The Talk” - English Assignment Help

Assignment Task:

Task:

Assignment: In 2-3 pages, please offer a close reading of the poem “The Talk” by Sharon Olds.

You can find the poem at the end of this prompt.

Preparation: Step 1:

As the term suggests, close reading is a form of analysis that consists of very close attention to the movement and structure of the language of a particular literary text. Read the poem over several times, the more the better. Be on the lookout for patterns of any sort: images or metaphors that repeat, thematic issues that keep returning, statements that may seem mutually contradictory, or produce some other sort of tension. As you become increasingly familiar with the poem in rereading it, try to trace the movement of its language from beginning to end as minutely as possible, sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase, even word by word. (These patterns can include sound patterns, but don’t focus on them to the exclusion of everything else.) Are there points where the poet says something surprising? Where what h/she says at one point does not seem necessarily to follow from h/she has said previously, that contradicts it or throws it in an unfamiliar light, or where h/she offers a piece of information that seems in some respect gratuitous or superfluous?

Step 2:
What narrative situation does the poem present? That is, what story, if any does it tell? How do the patterns you may have noticed in Step 1 complicate or enrich that story?

You should have noticed that the poem is narrated almost entirely in the third person. It shifts into only once. What is the significance of that shift? You should also have noticed that although the poem is spoken in the third person, it is also expressed from the point of view of one of the two characters in the story it tells. Which one? Why do you suppose she narrates the story in the third person?

Step 3:
Poems are generally built around tensions, contradictions, and paradoxes. Is there a tension or contradiction or paradox built into the narrative situation of the poem? Or built into the way the story unfolds? Or between the story and the  patterns which complicate it? Consider the smaller patterns you have noticed. Can you resolve them into some central tension or contradiction, or logical paradox which can account for all of them, or at least for as many as possible? As you begin to identify some unifying tension, go back and reread the poem yet again, testing your idea against the smaller patterns you have noted. Can you find anything additional? Is there anything that doesn’t seem to fit? Can you modify your sense of the unifying concerns to accommodate it? In this way you will refine your idea of the poem’s central tension. This idea will provide the basis for your thesis.

Writing: This paper is like any other in that it should consist of a thesis, supported by evidence. What makes it tricky, and somewhat unfamiliar is the nature of the evidence. The evidence consists of the patterns you have noticed. Begin the paper by stating your thesis and explaining it in general terms. This should take up the first paragraph. Then present your evidence in the paragraphs to follow by quoting liberally from the poem.

THE TALK

In the sunless wooden room at noon
the mother had a talk with her daughter.
The rudeness could not go on, the meanness
to her little brother, the selfishness.
The eight-year-old sat on the bed
in the corner of the room, her irises distilled as
the last drops of something, her firm
face melting, reddening,
silver flashes in her eyes like distant
bodies of water glimpsed through woods.
She took it and took it and broke, crying out
I hate being a person! Diving
into the mother
As if
Into
a deep pond—and she cannot swim,
the child cannot swim.
Sharon Olds

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