Rite of Passage

Sharon Olds’s work is often described as exemplifying Confessionalism, a movement of the mid-20th century that largely relied on subjective experience and autobiography to explore personal themes such as identity, mental health, and spirituality, and sometimes greater themes like genocide, social injustice, and war. For Olds, this adherence to Confessionalism can be seen most dominantly in her earliest work, including her Satan Says collection, which often draws on her own childhood and daily life to form greater connections to identity and being. Olds’s second collection, The Living and the Dead, which includes “Rite of Passage,” uses similar personal experiences and autobiography, including the experience of watching children at her son’s birthday party as a young mother, as a way to draw larger comparisons to society, particularly the struggle for dominance that often occupies predominantly male spaces, even at a young age. While Olds has often avoided describing her work as Confessionalism, she employs similar use of personal autobiography to make broader statements on identity and modern life.

Confessional-style poetry often uses free verse as its medium, moving away from the formal constraints of poetry that dominated before it and toward everyday language unencumbered by the concerns of