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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
A beautiful collection of poems, cataloguing the end of a long marriage. I loved Olds' turn of phrase.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
sad
medium-paced
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Stunning, personal, a gorgeous tribute to marriage and loss and desire.
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
When the poet's husband left their long marriage, she coped with the loss through her poetry. Olds is a powerful writer and, even though the concept of this book is a bit stale, she makes it feel fresher and finds ways to capture some of the most intangible parts of her pain.
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
guys i think i accidentally manifested my breakup via this book….
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
i really loved this collection. it was recommended by a lot of my writing friends when i asked for song/poem recs to support through a break up and i'm very glad folks recommended it. these poems felt both contained & really expansive - which i think might be the aim of a collection? each poem had it's specific focus, the thing/memory/place that it was focusing its attention, but through all the poems being collected here it created a really varied and multifaceted experience of a relationship ending and all that is entailed in that ending (and the inevitable, impossible beginnings that meet us at every end). i really appreciate the way that these poems don't seek certainty or finality - they felt honest and in that honesty, firmly grounded in the messiness, confusion, grief, fear, uncertainty, shame, confusion/disorientation, longing, and nostalgia of a relationship ending.
some of my favorite poems (literally every other poem lol):
some of my favorite poems (literally every other poem lol):
- unspeakable
- material ode
- gramercy
- telling my mother
- the last hour
- last look
- stag's leap
- known to be left
- object loss
- the worst thing
- love
- the healers
- something that keeps
- the easel
- to our miscarried one, age thirty now
- not quiet enough
- sleekit cowrin'
- tiny siren
- attempted banquet
- crazy
- on reading the newspaper for the first time as an adult
- i'd ask him for it
- years later
- what left?