Whether conscious or unconscious, who we are as adults is very much determined (or influenced) by the experiences we have during childhood. These experiences and relationships we have at such a young age can shape who we will be for the rest of our lives. Sharon Olds is a great poet who digs very deeply into her memories, especially those from her childhood, to understand what they really mean to her. In this way, Sharon Olds writes some pretty edgy poems that can make people cringe at the sheer amount of sexual detail and emotion that comes with it. The main ideas of these poems can range anywhere from the glass the speaker's father spits into before dying (The Glass) to the speaker and a significant other considering suicide in a restaurant (The Promise). But this is what makes her a fantastic poet; he digs into his memory to find the experiences that have most marked his life, evaluates them and then shamelessly recounts every detail. While writing in this way, Sharon Olds has an uncanny ability to highlight social inequalities to the reader. These inequalities specifically relate to the patriarchy we live in today and the effect it has on femininity and masculinity, especially speaking in terms of father/daughter relationships. The memories he writes about are all very personal and tell of many family problems he had during his childhood and adolescence. Whether it is the speaker and his sister playing with dolls while their parents argue (The Pact), the speaker remembering when his mother divorced his father (The Victims), the speaker recounting his feelings when his father he died (The Feelings), or when t... in the middle of the paper... my mother swam inside me." The speaker wants to make his daughter happy, while the speaker's mother only wants her so that she can be happy. Olds can certainly push the envelope when it comes to controversial messages in his poetry Whether the poem is about sex, violence, death, or feelings, the reader can expect Olds to throw his family into the mix to really make them think too. about their life. In my opinion, Sharon Olds is not the extreme feminist that many think she is. She still has many attachments to her father and he died when she was very young. Although Olds would probably only identify with these connections as biological or genetic , this is still something. However, Olds has always been infatuated with gender roles and includes them in almost all of her works even if she doesn't talk about them specifically, there are many examples.