Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
I took my time reading Olds' collection Stag's Leap, for here she is recalling the events surrounding and following the end of her marriage - more specifically, the end of love. Olds is positioned in a vulnerable seat of the left-behind spouse, forced to terminate a love that she is not ready to relinquish. I was surprised that her comments about her ex were not singed with bitterness or anger; rather she takes a more sympathetic attitude towards him - "I am half on the side of the leaver," taken from the title poem - missing him, revisiting tender feelings toward him, grieving almost the way a widow would in memory of her husband. At times this vexed me as a reader; her emotions would seem one-dimensional in the glaring absence of anger, of acknowledgement that her husband is the object of her pain (in some poems she communicates the very opposite). I almost wondered if she was, in fact, too timid to openly acknowledge the husband's betrayal. As she states in "Known to Be Left," "I am so ashamed/before my friends-to be known to be left," and yet she heaps all the shame of the divorce upon herself. Her husband she remembers with fond sadness, again, positioning herself almost as a widow pining for a husband suddenly made perfect by his very separation and absence.
However, I appreciate how Olds creates poetry in everyday moments and objects - a haircut, a mouse in a mousetrap, the face of an illness, a newspaper. She invites the poetry to comment on her life situations - a vase of tulips when her husband tells her he's leaving her, a bruise on her hip when she considers the wound her divorce has made upon her, etc. While I do not find all her poems to be "believable," I do find them to be beautiful, and though I agree with some of the harsher critiques of this book, I am ultimately glad that I read this work.
However, I appreciate how Olds creates poetry in everyday moments and objects - a haircut, a mouse in a mousetrap, the face of an illness, a newspaper. She invites the poetry to comment on her life situations - a vase of tulips when her husband tells her he's leaving her, a bruise on her hip when she considers the wound her divorce has made upon her, etc. While I do not find all her poems to be "believable," I do find them to be beautiful, and though I agree with some of the harsher critiques of this book, I am ultimately glad that I read this work.
Last Look
In the last minute of our marriage, I looked into
his eyes. All that day until then, I had been
comforting him, for the shock he was in
at his pain—the act of leaving me
took him back, to his own early
losses. But now it was time to go beyond
comfort, to part. And his eyes seemed to me,
still, like the first ocean, wherein
the blue-green algae came into their early
language, his sea-wide iris still
essential, for me, with the depths in which
our firstborn, and then our second, had turned,
on the sides of their tongues the taste buds for the moon-bland
nectar of our milk—our milk. In his gaze,
rooms of the dead; halls of loss; fogemerald;
driven, dirty-rice snow:
he was in there somewhere, I looked for him,
and he gave me the gift, he let me in,
knowing he would never once, in this world or in
any other, have to do it again,
and I saw him, not as he really was, I was
still without the strength of anger, but I
saw him see me, even now
that dropping down into trust’s affection
in his gaze, and I held it, some seconds, quiet,
and I said, Good-bye, and he said, Good-bye,
and I closed my eyes, and rose up out of the
passenger seat in a spiral like someone
coming up out of a car gone off a
bridge into deep water. And two and
three Septembers later, and even
the September after that, that September in New York,
I was glad I had looked at him. And when I
told a friend how glad I’d been,
she said, Maybe it’s like with the families
of the dead, even the families of those
who died in the Towers—that need to see
the body, no longer inhabited
by what made them the one we loved—somehow
it helps to say good-bye to the actual,
and I saw, again, how blessed my life has been,
first, to have been able to love,
then, to have the parting now behind me,
and not to have lost him when the kids were young,
and the kids now not at all to have lost him,
and not to have lost him when he loved me, and not to have
lost someone who could have loved me for life.
In the last minute of our marriage, I looked into
his eyes. All that day until then, I had been
comforting him, for the shock he was in
at his pain—the act of leaving me
took him back, to his own early
losses. But now it was time to go beyond
comfort, to part. And his eyes seemed to me,
still, like the first ocean, wherein
the blue-green algae came into their early
language, his sea-wide iris still
essential, for me, with the depths in which
our firstborn, and then our second, had turned,
on the sides of their tongues the taste buds for the moon-bland
nectar of our milk—our milk. In his gaze,
rooms of the dead; halls of loss; fogemerald;
driven, dirty-rice snow:
he was in there somewhere, I looked for him,
and he gave me the gift, he let me in,
knowing he would never once, in this world or in
any other, have to do it again,
and I saw him, not as he really was, I was
still without the strength of anger, but I
saw him see me, even now
that dropping down into trust’s affection
in his gaze, and I held it, some seconds, quiet,
and I said, Good-bye, and he said, Good-bye,
and I closed my eyes, and rose up out of the
passenger seat in a spiral like someone
coming up out of a car gone off a
bridge into deep water. And two and
three Septembers later, and even
the September after that, that September in New York,
I was glad I had looked at him. And when I
told a friend how glad I’d been,
she said, Maybe it’s like with the families
of the dead, even the families of those
who died in the Towers—that need to see
the body, no longer inhabited
by what made them the one we loved—somehow
it helps to say good-bye to the actual,
and I saw, again, how blessed my life has been,
first, to have been able to love,
then, to have the parting now behind me,
and not to have lost him when the kids were young,
and the kids now not at all to have lost him,
and not to have lost him when he loved me, and not to have
lost someone who could have loved me for life.
emotional
hopeful
sad
this won a Pulitzer and the T.S. Elliot prize, so who am I to be critical? I think Olds is a very accomplished poet, and many of these poems had wonderful imagery or insight or language, or all three. I also frequently admire the way she tackles a subject from many different angles, and gives us many different accounts of the truth. it gives the reader a complex portrait of the subject and doesn't allow us to assume anything is straightforward. however, I found at times this approach became repetitive. this collection is primarily about Olds' husband leaving her after a 30 year marriage, and while I think she does an amazing job making that subject both moving and dynamic, sometimes she repeats emotions or phrases too often, and some of the poems seem to run into each other. at 88 pages, this is a long collection, and I felt it could have been shorter.
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Oh, Ms Sharon Olds, why do you want to make me cry?