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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
It took me so long to find Sharon's poetry, but she came for me exactly when I needed her. Singlehandedly one of the best poetry collections I have ever read.
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
I've owned this collection for 6 or 7 years, only now getting to it. This is a powerful book about all kinds of losses and forgivenesses. Intense, personal, eloquent, sad. Highly recommended.
This collection chronicles the poet’s divorce from her husband of 30 years. It’s safe in this case NOT to make the distinction between the poet and speaker - the book is intimate confessional poetry, not some remote maybe yes/maybe no characters. Olds speaks openly about her experience - the shock of not being loved, not being wanted, being surprised and almost ashamed, and trying to adjust and understand.
*
While he told me, I looked from small thing
to small thing, in our room, the face
of the bedside clock, the sepia postcard
of a woman bending down to a lily.
*
I have read a good chunk of Olds’ poetry and I greatly admire her - she’s so talented and her images are robust and powerful. The glance she offers you is often raw, sometimes you just want to shut your eyes! Indeed, I usually can’t take her in large doses.
I felt differently with this, though. Despite the subject it seemed less of a gut-punch, more like a wounded person limping and (not asking but) needing sympathy. The poems were very well done and moving and occasionally suspenseful. One thing I wished was that she’d get angry, but then again, why be angry when mostly you’re hurt.
*
Now I come to look at love
in a new way, now that I am not
standing in its light. I want to ask my
almost-no-longer husband what it’s like to not
love, but he does not want to talk about it,
he wants a stillness at the end of it.
And sometimes I feel as if, already,
I am not here —
*
Telling the children, telling one’s mother. The marriage appears to break up because the husband is unhappy with someone who is so expressive - who writes about her life, who moans during sex, who likes to talk in general. I’d certainly recommend it. I didn’t think every poem was stellar, but they were all admirably honest and well turned. It's good, but probably not her best book.
One poem that knocked it out of the park for me was The Flurry:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/54907
*
While he told me, I looked from small thing
to small thing, in our room, the face
of the bedside clock, the sepia postcard
of a woman bending down to a lily.
*
I have read a good chunk of Olds’ poetry and I greatly admire her - she’s so talented and her images are robust and powerful. The glance she offers you is often raw, sometimes you just want to shut your eyes! Indeed, I usually can’t take her in large doses.
I felt differently with this, though. Despite the subject it seemed less of a gut-punch, more like a wounded person limping and (not asking but) needing sympathy. The poems were very well done and moving and occasionally suspenseful. One thing I wished was that she’d get angry, but then again, why be angry when mostly you’re hurt.
*
Now I come to look at love
in a new way, now that I am not
standing in its light. I want to ask my
almost-no-longer husband what it’s like to not
love, but he does not want to talk about it,
he wants a stillness at the end of it.
And sometimes I feel as if, already,
I am not here —
*
Telling the children, telling one’s mother. The marriage appears to break up because the husband is unhappy with someone who is so expressive - who writes about her life, who moans during sex, who likes to talk in general. I’d certainly recommend it. I didn’t think every poem was stellar, but they were all admirably honest and well turned. It's good, but probably not her best book.
One poem that knocked it out of the park for me was The Flurry:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/54907
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Stag's Leap reminded me of the scene early on in the John Cusack film Say Anything where Cusack's friend Corey sees her ex-boyfriend Joe at a party, and she gets out her guitar and begins playing all of the 65 songs she's written about their break-up. Stag's Leap is 49 poems about the dissolution of Olds's marriage. There are no poems on other topics.
Yet Olds hits on some fine metaphors and images in most of the poems, and the book as a whole isn't as tedious as one might expect from such a prospectus. While the book as a whole feel self-indulgent and wallowing, the individual poems somehow skirt the line between pain and self-pity with much more grace. There is one in particular I like, "Discandied," which can be found here: http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/olds_sp11.html
Yet Olds hits on some fine metaphors and images in most of the poems, and the book as a whole isn't as tedious as one might expect from such a prospectus. While the book as a whole feel self-indulgent and wallowing, the individual poems somehow skirt the line between pain and self-pity with much more grace. There is one in particular I like, "Discandied," which can be found here: http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/olds_sp11.html
challenging
emotional
reflective
I really don't understand the effusive praise for this collection. Part of it is certainly that I've never been a) in love with a man or b) divorced, but I just found it a bit dull overall. Olds can clearly write, but none of the feeling came through for me.