The Victims

Olds’s “The Victims” falls into a contextual literary category of poems that examine the family. Paving new paths while simultaneously writing in the vein of contemporaries like Marie Howe and Mary Oliver, Olds is known for deeply exploring family connections, childhood trauma, and memories that are better understood as an adult. Though not classified as a confessional poet, Olds shares many characteristics of this group such as writing about topics that are often considered taboo (drugs, alcoholism, sex, etc.) and drawing from autobiographical material. “The Victims” explores Olds’s family, her mother’s choice to divorce her father, and the consequences of this decision; the poem fits into the literary context of poems published in the post-confessional era—poems that draw from confessional poets like Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, but are written in a narrative framework like in the form of a memory.

Like Olds, C.D. Wright also pushed the boundaries of poetry and poetic topics, albeit in a different way. In comparison to “The Victims,” Wright’s “Tours,” (published in 1982) is worth examining. It is a poem told in the present tense—with no dramatic shift into memory; however, like Olds’s poem, it confronts abuse head-on.

Often called controversial, too sentimental, or emotional and sensational, much of Olds’s poetry was not initially well-received. However, her poems have since paved the way for a generation of poets writing provocative poems about the body and deep examinations about their childhood and traumatic events throughout their lives.