"Sex Without Love", Sharon Olds

Bio: Sharon Olds (1942) has won awards such as the Pulitzer Pruse and the National Book Critics Circle Award for works that critics refer to as "controversial". She most frequently wrote about intimate details relating yo herself, such as her children, strained relationships with her parents, and her sex life. While some criticize her work as "pornographic", others see it as expressing the "unpoetic" pmoments of life, the things not usually written about in poetry. 

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. 

This work by Olds describes her opinion about sex and how she does not understand how one can have sex with someone they do not love. She uses the metaphor of two ice dancers(2-5), which is usually seen as an intimate performance. As the speaker continues to describe what this act looks like to her, she includes diction that almost brings us into the act itself - she repeats the same phrase four times, as though she is being interrupted by the very act she is describing (8-9). Also, the unexpected interjection of the word "God" (9) among the phrase repetition leads the reader to believe that she is in a moment of pleasure herself. She continues to ask how one could "come to the waters"(9-10) - implying that the waters are the euphoric sensations that accompany sex - without loving the person that helped them get those sensations (10-11). Olds uses several different metaphors in this poem to develop her confusion at this topic, but one that stands out describes one who has sex without love as a runner. This stands out above the rest because of the diction she uses: "they know they are alone"(18) because they do not share a connection with the person to whom they are making love; "with the road surface"(19) referring to a bed; "the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-vascular health"(20-21) referring to two things that people like these would need: a condom that "fits" (because they are not emotionally connected with this person and therefore, would need protection against something to tie them down), and stamina to last the night. She concludes the poem by saying that these things are mere items in which to achieve sexual pleasure, not to enjoy intimate moments with a lover.