Olds grew up in the 60's. This was the time of the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King Jr., Kennedy, the first civil rights bill against racialism, war protesting began, the Beatles, the first presidential debate was televised and Woodstock, the peace and love movement. This is the decade that people started to pay attention and fight for what they believed in. You can see this mentality in Olds writings. It shows in her political view, her love for humanity and her self examination.  

Olds did not publish her first book until the 80s and stated that she looked up to poets such as George Oppen and Gary Snyder but realized that she had to find her own style or she felt she would not be a good writer. She confessed this as making a pact with the devil, to create her own works even if it they were not that great, though this pact was a pact more with herself. Olds also states that she has made a living out of writing because she is lucky.  Not many people have the luxury of being able to take the time or afford the time to write.

Japanese-American Farmhouse, California, 1942

Everything has been taken that anyone

thought worth taking. The stairs are tilted,

scattered with sycamore leaves curled

like ammonites in inland rock.

Wood shows through the paint on the frame

and the door is open- an empty room,

sunlight of the floor. All that is left

on the porch is the hollow cylinder

of an Alber's Quick Oats cardboard box

and a sewing machine. It’s extraterrestrial

head is bowed, its scrolled neck

glistens. I was born, that day, near there,

in wartime, of ignorant people.