The Glass by Sharon Olds

p. 500-01

In a way this is a father portrait poem. It is focused on something very specific though. The triggering subject is the glass of mucus that (if I understand what is going on correctly) the speaker's father is producing due to his throat cancer. But there is also an actual subject: The loss of the father or his dying. The speaker's world used to revolve around the father she says: "my father the old earth that used to / lie at the center of the universe" and now her father is "turning with the rest of us / around his death, bright glass of / spit on the table, these last mouthfuls." It is obviously a very vivid and graphic poem that does not soften the nastiness of dying from cancer--especially watching a parent die in this way. The fact that her father is the "old earth" is curious since the earth is obviously not the center of the universe but was thought to be until the 16th century. I don't know what this means but maybe it is a way of saying that her worldview has been drastically shaken up by what has happened.