Ode to Dirt

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2016

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Literary Context

As an ode—a lyric poem addressing a certain subject—“Ode to Dirt” entertains the age-old poetic form that heroizes dirt into a life force sustaining all living forms and extending outward to the universe. Olds’s dirt, which she characterizes throughout the poem as the basis for survival, plays with the contextual movements of the traditional ode, which often elevated an object or person to heroic or god-like height.

While classic odes were often written in formal meter, they still developed a ceremonious, lyrical mood that celebrated either a person, a place, an object or even an idea. The Romantic poets slightly altered the classic ode to celebrate or elevate an object, concluding the poem in a revelation. In the Romantic tradition, Olds does just that with “Ode to Dirt.” Through the course of this celebration, the speaker realizes dirt's power and force, allowing all that breathes on earth to exist. Other poets wrote odes in this vein, such as John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” which addresses the static image on an urn, resulting in revelations on youth, age, beauty, and truth.

Olds, taken with the celebratory form of the ode, wrote a complete collection them. Published in 2016, Odes explores topics from love and sex to gender and politics. While the topics might not always seem worthy of or ideal for celebration—such as “Ode to Dirt” or “Ode to the Hymen”—Olds, working in the tradition that the Romantic poets found so useful for addressing intense emotion, elevates often overlooked objects and ideas. Like many of her other collections, Odes goes where many poets fear to go; Olds uses the poetic form to her advantage, elevating often taboo elements of the body (such as mensuration) to a height that forces the reader to consider it.

Historical Context

Sharon Olds is—and long has been—a controversial poet. Often challenged throughout her career, her poems have been called “superficial,” and overly feminine (“Sharon Olds.” Poetry Foundation.). Olds has been quoted as stating that poetry’s purpose is “to give us intimacy among each other” (Olds, Sharon. “The Poetry of the In Between.” 2015. Poets and Writers). Therefore, she has never shied from intimate, complicated topics; she often writes about children, sex, the complications of love, and so-called women’s issues. When Olds began submitting poems in the late 1970s, one editor told her to submit to Ladies Home Journal instead of a literary magazine (Freeman, John. “Sharon Olds, America’s Brave Poet of the Body.” 2017. LitHub). Undeterred, Olds continues to write poems that challenge typical poetic topics, writing instead about her personal life and experiences.

Many contemporaries adore Olds and describe her poems as “generous,” “honest,” and “unflinching” (Freeman, John. “Sharon Olds, America’s Brave Poet of the Body.” 2017. LitHub.) “Ode to Dirt” is no exception. While relatively tame in subject matter compared to some other of Olds’s poems—about her alcoholic father, sex, and the female body—“Ode to Dirt” still asks readers to consider an overlooked, often scoffed at subject. Published later in Olds’s career (2016) at the height of global climate change, “Ode to Dirt” is controversial in its own way. The Paris Climate Agreement, signed in 2015, functioned as a worldwide gesture to change the way humans were treating, using, and harming the earth. Thus, this ode is well-timed, confronting environmentalism at its most basic, ground level: honoring the very ground humans walk upon.