The Poems “sex Without Love” by Sharon Olds and E.E. Cummings “she Being Brand” Are Poems That Encapsulate the Theme of Making Love and Sex Without Literally Saying It.
Essay Preview: The Poems “sex Without Love” by Sharon Olds and E.E. Cummings “she Being Brand” Are Poems That Encapsulate the Theme of Making Love and Sex Without Literally Saying It.
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The poems “Sex Without Love” by Sharon Olds and E.E. Cummings “she being Brand” are poems that encapsulate the theme of making love and sex without literally saying it. These poems come from different authors but have the same theme of being sexual.
In “Sex without Love,” lines 4-6 really show the sexual tension within the poem between two ice-skaters, “fingers hooked/ inside each others bodies,/ faces red as steak,..” .When Olds mentions how their fingers are hooked inside each others body its symbolic of making love and when she later describes the ice-skaters faces as being red as steak that is symbolic of human flesh, reinforcing the idea of raw lust between the two ice-skaters. In lines 8-10 presents a sexual pun to go with the ongoing theme of sex “How do they come/ to the come to the come to/ the God come to the still waters,” the repetition of the word “come” is suggesting the sexual term of male cum which is very descriptive and taboo.
In “she being Brand,” lines 6-8 Cummings shows the sexual theme by personifying his car into a girl, “thoroughly oiled the universal joint/ tested my gas felt of her radiator/ made sure her springs were O,” the use of the radiator on a car is to cool off heat, so this passage is representative of a male cooling off his sexual tension with the checking of her radiator. Also in line 8 “her springs were O” is suggestive of sex when looking on how Cummings puts in a capital “O” which is representative of the female sex organs. In lines 28-33 is another sign of a sexual theme “Gardens i slammed on/ the/ internal expanding/ &/ external contracting/ brakes Both at once and,” Cummings use of expanding and contracting is a metaphor for the actions of making love. The use of diction with words “internal” and “external” are suggestive to the male and female sex organs. Although Cummings and Olds poems describe ice-skaters and cars they are both suggestive of sexual themes.