Ode To Dirt By Sharon Olds

Myles Robinson
Pre-Ap 10
Mr. Fox
1, June 2023 “Ode to the Dirt” Poetry Analysis Essay In the poem “Ode to Dirt” written by Sharon Olds, the author is talking directly about the dirt. In a way almost as if the speaker admires the dirt. She makes the dirt seem like it's a special thing, something that could have created life, and something beautiful. Making us think it’s not soil but something much more important. Also, throughout the poem, the speaker's attitude evolves toward dirt, and there are many different literary devices she uses.

Throughout the entirety of the poem “Ode to Dirt,” the author Sharon Olds personifies “Dirt”. At the start of the poem it says “Dear dirt, I am sorry I slighted you”. The definition of slighted is to insult someone or something, so she is personifying dirt and saying I'm sorry that I insulted you. Which we can now infer that she cares about dirt and admires it. In the poem, the author also says “ I had never honored you as a living equal, I was ashamed of myself,

For example, she says “I thought you were only the background for the leading characters– the plants and animals and human animals”. When the speaker says this, she’s saying how she thought that dirt is kind of just sitting around the trees and not having any meaning. But now she realizes that dirt symbolizes life because it gives life to things such as trees, and gardens which feed people. As we read, we can see that the speaker has some time of admiration towards the dirt. She also says that “It’s as if I had loved only the stars and not the sky that gave them space”. What she is inferring to us is that she just admired the beauty of the tree, and didn’t admire the plant that gave that certain tree life. During the whole poem, the speaker uses a lot of metaphors to describe her gratitude towards