I Go Back to May 1937 (by Sharon Olds)

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,                                                   
I see my father strolling out                                                                                
under the ochre sandstone arch, the                                                                          
red tiles glinting like bent                                                                                 
plates of blood behind his head, I                                                                           
see my mother with a few light books at her hip                                                              
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,                                                                  
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its                                                             
sword-tips aglow in the May air,                                                                             
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,                                                   
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are                                                      
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.                                                                     
I want to go up to them and say Stop,                                                                        
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,                                                                           
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things                                                               
you cannot imagine you would ever do,                                                                        
you are going to do bad things to children,                                                                  
you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,                                                       
you are going to want to die. I want to go                                                                   
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,                                                        
her hungry pretty face turning to me,                                                                        
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,                                                                        
his arrogant handsome face turning to me,                                                                    
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,                                                                        
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I                                                                         
take them up like the male and female                                                                        
paper dolls and bang them together                                                                           
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to                                                                   
strike sparks from them, I say                                                                               
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it. 

[7grizzly]

回複 'GraceX' 的評論 : Thanks Grace for reading and your comments. Yes. The poems should reflect many, if not most, people's thoughts at some level towards their parents.

[GraceX]

7grizzly好，非常感謝你推薦的這首詩，雖然是第一次讀，但感覺它非常的獨特，於是特意去查了這首詩的來曆，看完介紹更是感慨萬千。也許你已經對這首詩歌有了很多的了解，但這不妨礙我將網絡上的一些介紹也分享在你這裏：

*********

This detailed literature summary also contains Bibliography on I Go Back to May 1937 by Sharon Olds.

Sharon Olds's poem "I Go Back to May 1937" is included in her collection The Gold Cell, published in 1987. Like much of Olds's poetry, "I Go Back to May 1937" is concerned with exploring the relationship between wife and husband, parents and children. In this poem the speaker travels back to a time just before her parents' marriage so that she might warn them of the mistake they are about to make. Although the speaker knows her parents will face pain, she cannot stop their union, since to do so would deny her own existence. She wants to live and so these people must be permitted to marry.

Olds has been unwilling to provide information to critics and readers about her personal life, including information about her parents. Many critics search her poems hoping to find some autobiographical truth about her, but Olds has made clear that she is trying to separate her life into two spheres, what she calls "the life of art and the life of life." Accordingly, it is difficult to know exactly what inspires the content of this poem. Is it the speaker's own unhappy childhood or is she responding from the experience of a child of divorce? The reader cannot know and is instead forced to find meaning in the words, separate from finding meaning in the poet's autobiography.

For her readers, Olds's poems seem very personal, including "I Go Back to May 1937." Many of her poems are concerned with the speaker's relationship with her father, as she seeks to understand his alcoholism, his abandonment of his family through divorce, and his painful death. The exploration of her parents' marriage?beginning as this poem does, just prior to their wedding?presents the essential paradox. The speaker wishes her parents had never married, had never made one another's lives so miserable. She wishes her own childhood had been spared the torment of her parents' unhappiness, and yet to eliminate their marriage would be to eliminate the speaker. This paradox gives the poem a unique tension.

from：http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-igobackmay1937/#gsc.tab=0