Love? It was more like dragonflies
in the sun, 100 degrees at noon,
the ends of their abdomens stuck together, I
close my eyes when I remember. I hardly
knew myself, like something twisting and
twisting out of a chrysalis
(Olds 2-7)
The poem Last Night, by Sharon Olds, is a reflection on the previous night’s sex. The speaker is talking to their lover – no genders are mentioned. I chose to look at lines 2 through 7 because they reflect the author’s irreverent treatment of a traditionally romantic and delicate subject, thereby demystifying it.
The speaker of the poem is never obviously identified – readers might assume they are female because the author is female, but there are not contextual clues, which already deviates from the standard heterosexual love poem where the speaker is a man. The lack of gendered language in this poem allows for it to be applied to many sexual situations, not just ones between a man and a woman. The carnality of the act that this poem describes is not limited to one kind of sex.
Contextually, Olds portrays the carnality of sex by comparing it dragonfly sex and rebirth. She is able to get the unorderly nature of the act across structurally as well, by using inconsistent line breaks and a mixture of incomplete and run on sentences. Rather than lyrical and flowing, the poem asks the reader to pause in the middle of phrases, creating a sense of urgency to finish the thought. The tempo speeds up toward the end of the six lines, as the dragonfly imagery becomes more potent and the sharp movements of insects overcome the contextual aspect, synthesizing into animalism.
“Love?” is the cultural assumption about sex that this poem seeks to analyze and destabilize. By asking rhetorically if what the speaker experienced was love, the speaker answers their own question by describing an alternate possibility of sex, not defined by love. By creating this opposition with a question, the poem asks readers to compare this poem to countless other love poems which romanticize the act of sex.
The imagery of the poem starts with the sensation of extreme heat, an uncomfortable feeling for the reader. Already we can tell that the opening question of “love?” will not be answered how we expect it to. Then comes the imagery of dragonflies having sex and twisting out of their chrysalis. The language is off putting, this description of sex is not appealing, certainly not for the animal chosen to illustrate it. The repetition of “twisting and twisting” suggests a long lasting action as well as an uncomfortable one. But then it is twisting out of a chrysalis, so we can assume there is an end to the twisting, and a rebirth.
Olds crafted a poem which dismantles cultural assumptions about sex, and assumptions about love poems. The animalistic aspect is not sexy, the sweatiness of the participants is not a gleam but a drenching in 100 degrees at noon. The bodies are twisting, separate of the people, for the speaker hardly recognizes themselves. There is no inherent mind and body connection in sex, and Olds provides the mechanics to emphasize that sex is not the embodiment of love. She makes sex approachable and common – it is the tender moments afterward that might be called love.
Works Cited
Olds, Sharon. “Last Night.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Comp. Kelly J. Mays. Ed. Spencer Richardson-Jones. 12th ed. New York: Norton, 2016. p. 803. Print.
