Sex Without Love
How do they do it, the ones who make love
without
love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other’s bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away.
How do they come to the
come to the
come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These
are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God.
They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are
alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health—just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.
Literary Analysis:
Sharon Olds has been referred to as a “poet of the body,” paying particular attention to the details of human actions and physical anatomy. According to Olds, the body’s way of knowing is the most reliable way of knowing truth. In Sex Without Love, rather than displaying her normal image that sex is power, Olds uses her graphic poetry to condemn sexual relations out of wedlock.
Three contrasts exist in Sex Without Love that make the poem very powerful: the surface approval versus the deeper criticism, emotional coldness versus physical heat, and the philosophical tone versus sexual puns.
Surface Approval: Initially, it appears that Olds is attempting to put the loveless lovers in a positive light, describing them in the positive imagery of “beautiful dancers,” ice skaters, and “great runners,” and making them seem more profound by worshiping only the God himself. However, all of the images imply narcissistic qualities, and all are people rejecting human fellowship to some degree. These lovers lack all human warmth, a point underscored by references to the ice and the cold wind.
Physical Heat v. Emotional Coldness: The steam is coming off the skin of the lovers is created by impersonal, even hostile actions as portrayed by “fingers hooked inside each other’s bodies. references to cold surfaces allow the poem to demonstrate the superficiality of this physical love (i.e. ice, road, skin).
Profound
Tone v. Sexual Puns:
The spacing and the interjection of “God” in the repetition of “come
to the” mimic the breathing and climax of these lovers.
Not shallow and tasteless, because these same people who reject the
priest, the human that helps man reach God, also reject the love of the
sexual partner that helps them reach ultimate pleasure.
Sex Without Love demonstrates the literary techniques typical of Sharon Olds.
Her characteristic weak use of line in ending lines with weak words (“and,” “with,” “the,” etc.), gives the poetry a chanting feel rather than a musical meter. The ritualistic sound of the poem is seen by repetition of the dactylic phrase “come to the” and the beginning of successive clauses with “they.”