A Critical Analysis Of Sharon Old's Sex Without Love

This poem dramatizes the conflict between actually feeling love and the act of making love. In Sharon Old’s “Sex without Love” the speaker floats in the third person as more of a scientist experimenting with love. On the surface love is mirrored through the imagery of “beautiful as dancers “and “great runners” (Olds 2-3); making love, as Sutton said “favorable” (178). To continue this praise for loveless-love, Sutton points out that in lines fourteen and fifth teen: “the ones who will not / accept a false Messiah, love the / priest instead of the God.” sex without love is “holier” and more sophisticated “because their highest urges are not grounded in the physical” (178). However, once context is considered the scientist chooses the appropriate hypothesis. Sutton points out that this praise for sex without love is an illusion, because there is a strong sent of narcissism with the comparison of runners and dancers. Dancers have a score to crack and runners have a time to beat; always lost in that competition and undermining humane interaction. In this way, the speaker brews up a tone that replaces this joy of loveless sex with an inherent loss of humane morality. …show more content…
Repetition of the question “How do they” further adds to the stone by portraying the speaker as frustrated and astonished with this human nature. This repetitive use of “they” and other pronouns such as: “the ones” and “each other”, provide the reader with the only sense of characterization----the general public. Sadly, there is no rhyme to enjoy; however there are strategic line breaks that highlight the various sex puns stored inside. For example, the repetition and alliteration of “come to the…” (which “come” is the pun) and the breaking of this repetition into two lines, tells the tale of the journey to