Analysis Of Poem Of Thanks By Sharon Old Enjambment

Many poets use enjambment as a tool to get the audience interested, keep them tantalized with each line, until the final gasp of words at the very end. Enjambment is the continuation of lines, usually without punctuation marks, and can be used to surprise the audience with the turn of the next line. It can give a poem a natural and unpredictable flow that can be quite alluring. In Sharon Olds’ poem, “Poem of Thanks,” there are multiple enjambments and great examples of the craft for the purpose of keeping the reader captivated with the storyline. Specifically, for this annotation, I will focus on the beginning lines (1-3), the in between lines ending with pronouns/articles (7,10, 11, 12), and the last three lines (25-27). Olds’ poem is in 27 lines, 6 sentences, and in one stanza. The poem begins with the setting, “years later” and the speaker’s relationship status, “long single” in the first sentence. Quickly it shifts into introducing another speaker, a man who has left and whom the speaker wants to address, “I want to turn to his departed back,” (2). Here is the first example of well used …show more content…
Knowing this, we approach the next few lines (15-23) with a piqued curiosity about this steamy situation between the speaker and addressee. Olds certainly delivers with vivid imagery and uses enjambments to deliver a summary of all the intimate locations shared by the two lovers, “in a barn”, on a beach, inside a garden, and in a “tiny bathroom”. Then again in line 25, she ends the line with "part" and a person could assume that the poem would end there. But Olds, a passionate poem who often writes about sensual matters, would not end there. Instead she adds in the following line, "equals, as we were in every bed, pure / equals of the earth” (26, 27). Thus, reaffirming the title and overall message of the poem, a thanks to a previous lover upon reflection and