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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
I almost want to find the vulnerability of this collection offputting, but instead it's somewhat illuminating. IDK if it was a life-changer, but I liked this.
reflective
It's been years since I've bought a book of poetry, especially a book of new poetry. I remember liking Sharon Olds when I studied poetry many years ago, so when I read that Sharon Olds had won the TS Eliot poetry prize and the Pulitzer prize for this collection of poems I felt compelled to buy it. Stag's Leap is written about the end of the author's marriage, an end called for rather suddenly by her husband.
The poems drew me in right away, in their chronological description of her husband telling her, to talking about how to tell the kids, who were grown, (theirs was a thirty year marriage), to telling her mother, to the their last lovemaking, to their last day living together in the house.
Poignant, honest, riveting. This is the story of love, of abrupt loss of love, of grief, but also acceptance. I found this book soon after my sister's husband of almost 35 years suddenly left her for another woman. I saw how devastated she was, and I thought of her while Sharon Old's words struck me, viscerally at times.
In the poem "Last Look" Ms. Olds describes the "last minute of our marriage":
"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 I saw again, how blessed my life has been,
first, to have been able to love,
then, to have the parting 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."
I mean, who could fail to be touched by such sentiments?
To find the blessing in having loved, and in the fact that he did not die while still loving her. I have never thought of such things, but hearing her give voice to these thoughts I was deeply moved.
These poems are deeply personal and not depressing or morbid. They are a tribute to love, and I am so, so happy that out of the ashes of her marriage, Sharon Olds rose triumphant with this excellent work of art.
The poems drew me in right away, in their chronological description of her husband telling her, to talking about how to tell the kids, who were grown, (theirs was a thirty year marriage), to telling her mother, to the their last lovemaking, to their last day living together in the house.
Poignant, honest, riveting. This is the story of love, of abrupt loss of love, of grief, but also acceptance. I found this book soon after my sister's husband of almost 35 years suddenly left her for another woman. I saw how devastated she was, and I thought of her while Sharon Old's words struck me, viscerally at times.
In the poem "Last Look" Ms. Olds describes the "last minute of our marriage":
"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 I saw again, how blessed my life has been,
first, to have been able to love,
then, to have the parting 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."
I mean, who could fail to be touched by such sentiments?
To find the blessing in having loved, and in the fact that he did not die while still loving her. I have never thought of such things, but hearing her give voice to these thoughts I was deeply moved.
These poems are deeply personal and not depressing or morbid. They are a tribute to love, and I am so, so happy that out of the ashes of her marriage, Sharon Olds rose triumphant with this excellent work of art.
A staggering distillation of emotion, of things which seem too intimate, too deeply-founded for language— and yet in poem after poem Olds sounds the reaches of herself with astounding frankness and grace. Her verse runs from the soul of love through the body and into the earth and back again, weaving an aching tapestry of tactile emotional riches. Rare is the work which can render such intensely private experience with such impeccability of craft and such forcefulness of feeling.
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
La voz poética desgrana todos los aspectos de su separación, de su divorcio: el recuerdo del cuerpo de su esposo, su última mirada, su lenguaje corporal, su reemplazo, la ausencia, la falta de apoyo emocional, transitar la separación en solitario, la vergüenza, etc.
I do not know how Sharon Olds is able to turn the pain of a divorce into the art of Stag's Leap , but there it is--a book of poetry compulsively readable, harrowing, desperate, and yes hopeful.
Sharon Olds reads the title poem: https://soundcloud.com/onpointradio/sharon-olds-reads-her-poem
Revelatory and intimate, these poems are so personal and finely crafted that reading them broke me open.
"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" (Stag's Leap, 15).
July 2023: Everyone knows Sharon Olds' Stag's Leap, Louise Glück's Vita Nova, and Anne Carson's "Glass Essay" are the holy heartache trinity for literary gals. I don't make the rules.
"And you couldn't say, / could you, that the touch you had from me / was other than the touch of one / who could love for life" (Poem of Thanks, 82).
How differently this collection strikes my head and heart roughly a year later. I remember feeling pulled to a used copy while in Bath at the beginning of the year, not knowing all that would unfold. Around that same time, Jane Hirshfield's "The Visible Heat" began haunting my brain.
Olds' words are saturated with the rawness of grief, the eerie release after giving up the fight: "It is what I do now: not go, not / see or touch... / I am a stunned knower / of not" (Not Going to Him, 25).
She aptly captures the dilemma of the writer/beloved: "I who had no other / gift to give the world but to hold what I / thought was love's mirror up to us" (Not Quiet Enough, 48-49).
August 2022: Real poetry girlies get emotional about Sharon Olds at sunset on a park bench (prepared all the while to fend off seagulls from their gluten-free fish and chips).
4.5 stars. Stag's Leap is a blunt force trauma to the heart, a testimony there's no correct timeline for grief. I think it's interesting that I've been gravitating lately to poetry collections that so greatly diverge from my own life experiences; I haven't personally known divorce, miscarriage, or the death of parents, yet these words still penetrate my very marrow and rattle around in my brain.
Olds excavates love as fickle and yet, even so, the most beautiful thing we can have and hold.
"I thought / wherever we were, we were in lasting love - / even in our separateness and / loneliness, in love - even the / iceberg just outside the mouth, its / pallid, tilting, jade-white / was love's, as we were. We had said so" (Love, 31).
Even in the ache, hope and healing creep in like ivy: "I saw, again, how blessed my life has been, / first, to have been able to love, / then, to have the parting now behind me... " (Last Look, 14).
#sealeychallenge2022
July 2023: Everyone knows Sharon Olds' Stag's Leap, Louise Glück's Vita Nova, and Anne Carson's "Glass Essay" are the holy heartache trinity for literary gals. I don't make the rules.
"And you couldn't say, / could you, that the touch you had from me / was other than the touch of one / who could love for life" (Poem of Thanks, 82).
How differently this collection strikes my head and heart roughly a year later. I remember feeling pulled to a used copy while in Bath at the beginning of the year, not knowing all that would unfold. Around that same time, Jane Hirshfield's "The Visible Heat" began haunting my brain.
Olds' words are saturated with the rawness of grief, the eerie release after giving up the fight: "It is what I do now: not go, not / see or touch... / I am a stunned knower / of not" (Not Going to Him, 25).
She aptly captures the dilemma of the writer/beloved: "I who had no other / gift to give the world but to hold what I / thought was love's mirror up to us" (Not Quiet Enough, 48-49).
August 2022: Real poetry girlies get emotional about Sharon Olds at sunset on a park bench (prepared all the while to fend off seagulls from their gluten-free fish and chips).
4.5 stars. Stag's Leap is a blunt force trauma to the heart, a testimony there's no correct timeline for grief. I think it's interesting that I've been gravitating lately to poetry collections that so greatly diverge from my own life experiences; I haven't personally known divorce, miscarriage, or the death of parents, yet these words still penetrate my very marrow and rattle around in my brain.
Olds excavates love as fickle and yet, even so, the most beautiful thing we can have and hold.
"I thought / wherever we were, we were in lasting love - / even in our separateness and / loneliness, in love - even the / iceberg just outside the mouth, its / pallid, tilting, jade-white / was love's, as we were. We had said so" (Love, 31).
Even in the ache, hope and healing creep in like ivy: "I saw, again, how blessed my life has been, / first, to have been able to love, / then, to have the parting now behind me... " (Last Look, 14).
#sealeychallenge2022