The One Girl at the Boys Party by Sharon Olds
"The One Girl at the Boys Party" by Sharon Olds explores the complexities of a young girl's transition from childhood to adolescence in a social setting filled with boys. The poem, composed of twenty-one lines, presents a mother’s perspective as she observes her daughter at a swimming party, where the girl, an exceptional math student, captivates the attention of her male peers. Through vivid imagery, the mother reflects on the girl's youthful appearance, symbolized by her hamburger-and-fries bathing suit and ponytail, juxtaposed with her emerging awareness of her own sexuality and the boys around her.
The poem employs mathematical language to illustrate the girl's sharp intellect and ability to analyze her surroundings, suggesting an interplay between her academic prowess and burgeoning femininity. As she interacts with the boys, the speaker notes her daughter's recognition of their masculinity, which hints at her developing sexual identity. The tone of the poem balances amusement and admiration, indicating the mother's respect for her daughter's intelligence and the natural process of maturation. Ultimately, the work captures a poignant moment of growth and self-discovery, emphasizing both the innocence of youth and the excitement of impending adulthood.
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The One Girl at the Boys Party by Sharon Olds
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1984 (collected in The Dead and the Living, 1984)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
In the slender action of the twenty-one lines that make up “The One Girl at the Boys Party,” Olds combines three patterns of imagery that underscore the speaker’s recognition of her daughter’s approaching maturity. In the poem, the speaker (that this is the mother is never explicitly stated) takes the girl, a superior math student, to a swimming party where boys immediately surround her. The speaker sees the young people dive into the pool and imagines her daughter working math problems in her head to calculate her relationship to the diving board and the gallons of water in the pool. The girl’s suit has a pattern of hamburgers and french fries printed on it, and when she climbs from the pool, her ponytail will hang wet down her back. The speaker knows that as the girl looks at the boys, she will be recognizing the appeal of their masculinity.
One element of the poem’s language concerns the childishness of the young girl. The speaker calls her “my girl,” as if she is a small child, and places her at the pool party as if she were an infant. Although she will soon become a woman, her appearance is childish, too. The hamburger-and-fries pattern of her bathing suit, her ponytail, and the sweetness of her face all suggest a very young child.
This girl, however, is no fool, as her mother knows. Humorously, the speaker imagines the girl’s math scores unfolding around her in the air, and mathematics makes up the second significant element of the poem’s language. Not only do her math scores follow her to the party, but her quick mind can also make calculations about the pool at the same time she is diving into it. Moreover, she can calculate the interesting qualities of the young men around her. At this point, the poem’s mathematical diction merges with the sexual.
Early in the poem, the speaker compared the girl’s sleek, hard body to a prime number. Now she sees the girl’s face as a factor of one, as the girl evaluates the boys in numerical terms—eyes and legs, two each; the “curves of their sexes, one each.” The speaker knows that this recognition will lead the girl to more interesting calculations, “wild multiplying.”
The language of male and female has been present from the poem’s start. The boys are early described as “bristling”; the girl is “sleek.” So it is no surprise that the end of the poem reveals the girl’s latent sexual power, which is about to appear. It will be considerable, as the concluding image suggests: Many droplets of water, which seem sexually energized by their contact with the girl’s body, fall “to the power of a thousand.”
The tone of the poem is both amused and admiring. Clearly, the speaker respects the girl’s intellect as well as her right to grow into sexual maturity.
Bibliography
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