According to Brian Sutton, “It illustrates a contrast between surface approval and deeper criticism of the ones who make love/without love” (Sutton 140).  Many images within the poem appear to suggest that the author admires people who partake in sex without love, but when the images are examined more closely within the context of the poem, a far less approving attitude emerges from the speaker. Olds’ clever use of imagery makes this poem come to life.  Olds frequently uses similes to make the audience imagine actual   events.  For example, Olds describes making love as being as “beautiful as dancers.” (2) In this line, she questions how one can do such a beautiful act with a person whom one is not in love with.  Olds also describes sex as “gliding over each other like ice skaters over

the ice.”(3, 4) Here she is referring to sex as a performance.  Imagine an ice skating performance.  Each ice skater is performing for judges and an audience to win an award.  Olds uses this simile to portray people   who are performing for one another.  When two people truly are in love, there is no need for any special show or performance. To underscore the partners’ emotional coldness, Olds contrasts it with the physical heat they generate during sex. They are described as having “faces red as steak” an image which emphasizes the heat of the moment, and paradoxically reduces the sexual partner to the status of a piece of raw meat. More importantly, however, the images are here not for enjoyment, but rather to exhibit the reality of the action.

 Another simile the author uses is “As wet as the children at birth whose mothers are going to give them away,” (6-8) to simulate a sweaty lovemaking scene. This image dramatizes the ultimate refusal to acknowledge emotional attachment as a consequence of sexual intercourse.  The author repeatedly questions how two people who are not in love can perform such a spiritual act, which can also be used to represent the outcome of lustful copulation. The simile “light rising slowly as steam off their joined skin” (11-13) can also be used to perceive the same image of a hot, sweaty, and passionate love making scene. 

Olds compares the lovers with “great runners.”  (18)  In this simile, she implies that lovers are alone with their own pleasures.  Olds’ questions this selfishness throughout the poem.   How can two people be alone in pleasure, when sex is supposed to be both physically and emotionally shared between lovers? The author feelings are easily

 

determined, especially with the phrase “just factors, like the partner in bed.” Though it is not definitive, stating that the people in bed together are just meager factors of life strongly indicates that there is distaste for sex without love. The images work well together to illustrate the speaker’s feelings. With the sex in the beginning, and then the

running towards the end, it is as if the two are being compared as simply an athletes and a portion of “cardiovascular-health” as said in the end.

Olds uses exaggeration to describe her belief that sex and God are entwined. “These are the true religions, the priest, the pros, the one who will not accept a false Messiah, love the priest instead of the God.” (13-17) In these lines she says that sex is more than pleasure, and if one is merely using sex for pleasure they are accepting a false God.  She describes people as hypocrites who claim to love the sex, yet engage in immoral sex. In the lines, “come to the   come to the   come to the   God come to the still waters, and not love the one they came there with,” (8-11) Olds describes two people climaxing.  Olds perceives sex as spiritual, and wonders how people can bring a person with whom they are not in love with before God.  Olds uses hyperbole to share her disgust of casual sex with her audience. The poem also begins and ends with sexual puns. When the poem begins with “How do they do it, the ones who make love /without love?” the question has to do not only with the separation of sexual intimacy from emotional commitment, but also with sexual methods. The poem’s later description of impersonal sexual techniques tells exactly how they “do it” in both senses of those words.

 

 Olds clearly despises people who engage in sex without being in love.  She is able to emphasize her view in a tasteful manner by using imagery throughout her poem.  Olds is able to express her disgust by using imagery to portray her objection to casual sex. Olds reminds readers that if they fail to realize that others are not simply two dimensional props in our own personal universes, we will miss the fact that life is made of connection, not disconnection.

 

 

Works Cite                                                                               

 

 

Olds, Sharon. “Sex Without Love.” Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X Day, and Robert Funk. 8^th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 2007. 667.

Scheponik, Peter C. “Olds’s ‘My Father Speaks to me from the Dead.’” The Dead and the Living: Explicator 16.1 (1988): 59. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Century College Lib., White Bear Lake, MN. 4 Dec. 2007 <http:// www.ebscohost.com>.

Sutton, Brian.”Old’s Sex Without Love.” The Explicator 55.3 (1997): 177-180. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Poetry Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 22. Detroit: Gale, 2003. 339-340.