‘Sometime during the Truman Administration, Sharon Olds’s parents tied her to a chair, and she is still writing about it.’
– review of The Unswept Room
‘My father was a gentleman, and he expected us to be gentlemen. If we did not observe the niceties of etiquette he whopped us with his belt. He had a strong arm, and boy did we feel it.’
– Prescott Sheldon Bush, brother to a president and uncle to another
They put roofs over our heads.
Ours was made of bent tiles,
so the edge of the roof had a broken look,
as if a lot of crockery
had been thrown down, onto the home –
a dump for heaven’s cheap earthenware.
Along the eaves, the arches were like
entries to the Colosseum
where a lion might appear, or an eight-foot armored
being with the painted face
of a simpering lady. Bees would not roost
in those concave combs, above our rooms,
birds not swarm. How does a young ’un
pay for room and board – by belt,
by hairbrush, by 2 × 4. They put a
roof over our heads, against lightning,
and droppings – no foreign genes, no outside
gestures, no unfamilial words;
and under that roof, they labored as they had been
labored over, they beat us into swords.