The Language of the Brag

I loved this poem because commonly, marks of valor, strength, and greatness are reserved for grand acts and unusual feats of extraordinary means, like "crossing... waterfalls" and "throw[ing] kni[ves]". These endeavors are usually connotated as masculine, and in turn, reserved for men, as indicated by Olds' claims that she has idly "stood by the sandlot and watched the boys play." She uses grand metaphors to illustrate these points; namely, "the blade piercing the bark deep" and "the haft slowly and heavily vibrating like the cock." These further illustrate the notion of power she is rebelling against.

When taking claim to her own act of grandeur — giving birth — she emphasizes the gruesome details of her plight. Her belly becomes "big with cowardice and safety," her "stool black with iron pills," her "huge breasts oozing mucus," her "legs swelling," her "hands swelling." It is almost as though through structurally building up these symptoms and "swelling" them into messier and messier problems, she is building up to her eventual surrender; her laying down.

The shift occurs whenever the reader realizes that this laying down is her ultimate act of triumph and strength. Surrender is usually connotated as a weakening, a pulling inwards into the self. Olds redefines it as spreading her legs wide and giving birth, as ridding herself of "blood and feces and water," as ultimately, fully exposing the self and becoming great because of it. She is fully exposed and vulnerable in this moment and she demands to be "praise[d]" for it. In doing so, she reclaims what is is to be powerful and do something great, and subsequently turns concepts of masculinity, patriotism, and heroism as Whitman and Ginsberg define it into a limiting construct. She transcends the limitations such narrow-minded thinking imposes.