Analyzing The Poem "First Hour" By Sharon Olds

I decided to analyze the poem "First Hour" by Sharon Olds. I want to analyze this one because it confused me a little bit and I wanted to look deeper into it. I feel like it's talking about a baby when it came right out of the womb, but then sometimes it sounds like it's talking about a baby in the womb.

As I read through it more and read it over again, I'm realizing that it's actually talking about the baby after it came out of the womb, hence the title "first hour," the first hour of it's life. The part that is extremely interesting to me is when it says, "I hated no one. I gazed and gazed, and everything was interesting, I was free, not yet in love, I did not belong to anyone, I had drunk no milk, yet - no one had my heart." It seems to tie into the first line which is "that hour, I was most myself." In my opinion, it's like the baby in this story is saying that the first hour of life is so much more different than the rest. We are innocent and free. We know absolutely nothing and we have no hate in our hearts. We aren't in love with anyone or attached to them. We don't belong to anyone and no one actually has our heart. It's like in that very moment, we are the rawest version of ourselves and nothing else matters.

But I do have a few questions about this poem, such as: what is the meaning behind "all I had to do was go out along the line of my gaze and back, out and back, on gravity's silk"? It doesn't really make much sense to me. I would also like to know what Sharon meant when she wrote, "I lay like a god, for an hour"? I think I understand the rest of the poem but those lines confused me a little bit.

This poem is really interesting and intriguing to me since it's from the point of view of a baby and I've never seen a poem written from that perspective. I'm not really a huge fan of poems, but this definitely caught my attention and I liked reading it!