Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
emotional
sad
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
sad
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
medium-paced
All at once an intimate (at times almost painfully so) and introspective window into one woman's divorce.
The poems here are a delicate, forthright, and heart-wrenching exploration as the poet struggles to find solid ground after the collapse of such a cornerstone relationship. She doesn't blame or point fingers but instead approaches the subject with a sense of eyes-open wisdom few possess.
If you're interested in poetry at all, I highly recommend this book. Very powerful and artfully written.
The poems here are a delicate, forthright, and heart-wrenching exploration as the poet struggles to find solid ground after the collapse of such a cornerstone relationship. She doesn't blame or point fingers but instead approaches the subject with a sense of eyes-open wisdom few possess.
If you're interested in poetry at all, I highly recommend this book. Very powerful and artfully written.
I enjoyed the narrative that Olds's poems crafted as I read through the poems. However, there weren't any poems that struck me as particularly memorable, no lines that I had to pause and think about and marvel at for a while.
This is the second collection of Sharon Olds's poetry I have read. The first being 'Arias'. I was mightily impressed with 'Arias' and 'Stag's Leap' is as good.
Published in 2012 it is a highly personal collection about separation. It is a poetic telling of the end of a long marriage and its consequences. It is a story of memories, closeness, loss, freedom and release. Olds managed to be much more magnanimous than others might be in the circumstances, especially as her husband has met someone else:
"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."
Olds also makes you understand how her feelings change over time as she gradually lets her ex-husband go. She talks about what she misses, but also about what she gained from their time together. I don't know if Olds herself found writing these poems cathartic. I don't know if she didn't write down the darkest or bitterest of her thoughts. To be fair I don't even know if this collection is about Olds's own life. I could probably find out, but I think that might spoil it. As far as I'm concerned this is Old's own story. And writing about it was her way of dealing with it.
One poem in particular, 'Last Look' would make the collection worth reading.
Published in 2012 it is a highly personal collection about separation. It is a poetic telling of the end of a long marriage and its consequences. It is a story of memories, closeness, loss, freedom and release. Olds managed to be much more magnanimous than others might be in the circumstances, especially as her husband has met someone else:
"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."
Olds also makes you understand how her feelings change over time as she gradually lets her ex-husband go. She talks about what she misses, but also about what she gained from their time together. I don't know if Olds herself found writing these poems cathartic. I don't know if she didn't write down the darkest or bitterest of her thoughts. To be fair I don't even know if this collection is about Olds's own life. I could probably find out, but I think that might spoil it. As far as I'm concerned this is Old's own story. And writing about it was her way of dealing with it.
One poem in particular, 'Last Look' would make the collection worth reading.
challenging
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Really remarkable. A searing, physical description of devistating loss and what comes after.