Sharon Olds
Sharon Olds
Books of Poetry (alphabetical).
Time Line.
Books.
Sharon Olds featured in:
Best American Poetry: 2009
(guest editor David Wagoner)
with "Red".
Best American Poetry: 2006
(guest editor Robert Creeley)
with "Frontis Nulla Fides".
Best American Poetry: 2001
(guest editor Robert Hass)
with "His Costume".
Best American Poetry: 1999
(guest editor Robert Bly)
with "What It Meant".
Best American Poetry: 1994
(guest editor A.R. Ammons) with
"The Knowing".
- Blood, Tin, Straw (1999).
- Father, (The) (1992).
- Gold Cell, (The) (1997).
- Living and the Dead, (The) (1983),
- One Secret Thing (2008).
- Satan Says (1980),
-
Stag's Leap (2012).
- Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002 (2004).
- Unswept Room, (The) (?).
- Wellspring, (The) (1995).
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Living and the Dead (1983)
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No dedication.
A book of love lost with the end of her long marriage.
One of her finest books. Favorite poems are many and include:
- "Unspeakable" (p. 4-5)
- "Telling my Mother" (p. 10)
- "The Last Hour" (p. 13)
- "Poem for the Breasts" (p. 21-22)
- "The Easel" (p. 38)
- "Not Quite Enough" (p. 48-49)
- "Sleekit Cowrin'" (p. 55)
- "Tiny Siren" (p. 56-57)
- "Bruise Ghazal" (p. 67)
- "Left-Wife Bop" (p. 83-84)
From the cover:
In this wise and intimate telling — which carries us through the
seasons when her marriage was ending — Sharon Olds opens her heart to the
reader, sharing the feeling of invisibility that comes when we are no longer
standing in love's sight; the surprising physical bond that still exists
between a couple during parting; the loss of everything from her husband's
smile to the set of his hip. Olds is naked before us, curious and brave and
even generous toward the man who was her mate for thirty years and who now
loves another woman. ...
As she writes in the remarkable
Stag's Leap,
"When anyone escapes, my heart
leaps up. Even when it's I who am escaped from,
I am half on the side of the leaver."
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Data:
- 49 poems
in 6 sections.
- 89 pages but includes 15 non-poem pages,
leaving 74 for poems and so about 1.2 pages per poem.
- All poems are in a single stanza; one has two.
- 25 (50%) poems take more than one page.
- Acknowledges prior publications in these journals:
- Atlantic Monthly
- American Poetry Review
- Brick
- Five Points
- Green Mountain Review
- Gulf Coast
- New Yorker
- Ontario Review
- Ploughshares
- Poetry
- Poetry London
- Southern Review
- Threepenny Review
- Tin House
- Tracking the Storm
- TriQuarterly
- Slate
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Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002 (2004)
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Dedication: "For our daughter and son".
A passionate collection in four parts on the four main areas that her poems arise:
Her parents; Her adolescence; Her son and daughter; and Her husband.
One has to wonder how comfortable her family can be with their appearance in her
physically and emotionally explicit poems.
But Olds mines her relationship with her dear ones for powerful poems.
The 2012
Stag's Leap
subsequently described the breakup of the marriage.
Blog entry.
- 1942.
- Born in San Francisco.
(Later educated at Stanford University and Columbia University.)
- 1980.
- Published her first collection,
Satan Says (1980),
for which she won the San Francisco Poetry Center Award.
- 1983.
- Published her second collection,
Living and the Dead, (The) (1983),
for which she won the National Book Critics Circle Award
and which was the Lamont Poetry selection for 1983.
- 1992.
- Published
Father, (The) (1992),
which was short-listed for the T.S.Eliot Prize in England.
- Received a three-year writer's award from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund in 1992.
- 1995.
- Published
Wellspring, (The) (1995),
which was a finalist for the National Book Award
and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
- 1997.
- Published
Gold Cell, (The) (1997).
- 1998.
- Named New York State Poet.
- 1999.
- Published
Blood, Tin, Straw (1999).
- ?.
- Published
Unswept Room, (The) (?).
- 2004.
- Published
Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002 (2004).
- 2008.
- Published
One Secret Thing (2008).
- 2012.
- Published:
Stag's Leap (2012).
- 2013.
- Won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for
Stag's Leap (2012).
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Links and Books.
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