The Image of the Father in Sharon Olds' "Love Fossil"

Some poets represent the image of a father so the reader will forget his humanity. In Sharon Olds’ poem “Love Fossil,” she depicts her father as a dinosaur, the most frightful of monsters because it really existed. She says her father is “Like the other dinosaurs / massive, meaty, made of raw steak” (2-3). She gives these descriptions because she is a dinosaur, too. Her hunger for his love turns her into one. She is even more monster-like than him, because while he is an “elegant vegetarian” (1), she is a carnivore.

The end lines redeem her because she chooses not to eat him: “I went hungry.” Together, the father and the speaker are lost in images that do not represent or maintain their humanity. The violent images Olds presents are the kind of language I don’t want to give my father. This language focuses too much on the monster who is “dripping weeds and bourbon, /super sleazy extinct beast my heart dug for” (4-5). This is not how I want to represent anyone in my family, not without first giving them a chance to show his or her good side.

Works Citied:

Olds, Sharon. Satan Says. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1980.

No part of this essay my be reproduced without the express permission of No Teeth or Jess Myers.