Olds, Sharon

Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002

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Support from a chronic fan
Support of Sharol Olds
If her poems are as moving as her letter to Laura...
Still the best living female poet
Just horrible

Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002
Sharon Olds
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

Gold Cell (Knopf Poetry Series)
The Dead and the Living
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Satan Says (Pitt Poetry)
The Father

ASIN: 0375710760
Release Date: 2004-09-28

Book Description

A powerful collection from one of our most gifted and widely read poets–117 of her finest poems drawn from her seven published volumes.

Michael Ondaatje has called Sharon Olds’s poetry “pure fire in the hands” and cheered the “roughness and humor and brag and tenderness and completion in her work as she carries the reader through rooms of passion and loss.” This rich selection exhibits those qualities in poem after poem, reflecting, moreover, an exciting experimentation with rhythm and language and a movement toward an embrace beyond the personal. Subjects are revisited–the pain of childhood, adolescent sexual stirrings, the fulfillment of marriage, the wonder of children–but each recasting penetrates ever more deeply, enriched by new perceptions and conceits.

Strike Sparks is a testament to this remarkable poet’s continuing and amazing growth.

From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews:

Support from a chronic fan.......2007-06-17

As one of Olds' fans for many years, I am the owner of most of her books. Her book The Father still brings me to tears. I want to buy this additional one in support, as are others, of her letter to Laura Bush--and of her ongoing brilliance and honesty as a poet.

Support of Sharol Olds.......2005-10-01

After reading her letter to Mrs. Bush, I'm supporting Sharon Old's rejection of Laura Bush's invitation to participate in the National Book Festival and breakfast at the White House by buying one of her books. Thank you, Sharon Olds for making this brave and costly stand. I hope others will buy your books to support you and your honesty. I look forward to becoming acquainted with your poetry.

If her poems are as moving as her letter to Laura..........2005-09-22

I have to admit I was not familiar with the work of Sharon Olds before today. Today I read her moving letter to Laura Bush explaining why she was declining her invitation to the National Book Festival in Washington.

If her poetry is one tenth as moving, heart-felt, and true as that letter, she's gotta be one terrific poet, and I look forward to the volumes of her work I ordered from Amazon this evening. If you've not yet read her letter yet, I urge you, do so.

Still the best living female poet.......2005-08-20

Sharon Olds is a standard issue female confessionalist poet. If you like Plath or Sexton then give her a try. She is more graphic then they are though. I hate to see her described by one reviewer as the worst poet in the world. Simply not true. If you enjoy honest, bare and shocking writing then she will be the best poet you have ever read.

Just horrible.......2005-08-19

Easily one of the worst popular poets working today, Sharon Olds tricks out her work with pseudo-shocking imagery, dismal cliches and awkward enjambment. But because she addresses politically-touchy subjects, few have the guts to call her on it. The problem is not the controversial topics she addresses; it's the wholly unoriginal ways she addresses them. Privilege and "sensitivity" drip from every line, with nary a note of sincerity or risk.

Read Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton (or to a lesser extent Adrienne Rich) instead: the work of this pale and lifeless knock-off deserves to be ignored.

Average customer rating:

Gutsy Olds
THE DEAD AND THE LIVING
Go see a therapist
This book made me feel dirty
Moved me

The Dead and the Living
Sharon Olds
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

Gold Cell (Knopf Poetry Series)
The Wellspring: Poems
The Father
Blood, Tin, Straw: Poems
Satan Says (Pitt Poetry)

ASIN: 0394715632
Release Date: 1984-02-12

Book Description

The 1983 Lamont poetry selection of the Academy of American Poets.

Customer Reviews:

Gutsy Olds.......2007-03-09

If you are reading this you have probably already read Sharon Olds, and liked her enough to go back and look at some of her earlier works, but are fighting a tinge of reservation. Olds can be admired for the sheer raw guts she puts into her poems, the brutal way she expresses her internalized truths. Her honesty is alarming and alluring. But there can be a pariah quality to her, as well. I want to say she has a touch of Madonna in her ethos. At times she can seem to be sneering. This would be insulting, except her writing is so good we want to forgive her, and do - mostly. I find it frustrating when this tone creeps in, as it does here in one or two places. Another disquieting aspect of her writing is the inclusion of some very intimate aspects of her children at various ages and phases. I appreciate her words for their beauty but wonder if her children resent so much exposure. Fortunately, most of the poems in this book are full of clear, blunt prose that revoke the layers of artificiality that can come to accompany our memories of ourselves and the more painful aspects of our personal histories. I find her poems refreshing for this quality (even though thank God I don't have her history). So, although not all poems in this book avoid a self-aggrandizing, mock horror edge, and a few may upset tender sensibilities about what information we need to know about her children in order to understand her as a mother/writer, I enjoyed this book and would even recommend it to readers who have already formed some apprehension toward her work.

THE DEAD AND THE LIVING.......2006-04-10

I would give this book 0 stars if that were listed on your chart.

Based on this book, titled THE LIVING AND THE DEAD I believe
that Sharon Olds is a very much in need of professional help.

I have read other poetry of hers, as well, and have the same
opinion of it. Frankly, I don't see why Knopf published it.
Maybe they need help too.

Do not recommend this book to anyone.

Go see a therapist.......2004-02-06

Sharon Olds needs to stop writing poetry and instead she needs to go see a therapist; at least the therapist will get paid to hear her whine.

This book made me feel dirty.......2004-01-09

Due to Sharon Olds' ambiguous subjects, it is difficult to know if she is talking about a child or a lover. I was assigned this book in college, and my classmates and I jokingly referred to it as "kiddie porn." Half of the class thought she was sensually admiring her lover's genitals, while the other half insisted she was lovingly watching her children grow. I am not sure if she intentionally created a vague subject, but I felt dirty after reading this book.

Moved me.......1999-10-01

Every poem resonated with me. I have never been a big reader of poetry, but this is different. Moving.

Average customer rating:

Whoa.
you need this
An Exhilarating Read, But Not For Everyone. . .
Visceral, haunting imagery
For Sharon

Gold Cell (Knopf Poetry Series)
Sharon Olds
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

The Dead and the Living
Satan Says (Pitt Poetry)
The Wellspring: Poems
The Father
Blood, Tin, Straw: Poems

ASIN: 0394747704
Release Date: 1987-02-12

Book Description

A new collection by the much praised poet whose second book THE DEAD AND THE LIVING, was both the Lamont Poetry Selection for 1983 and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Customer Reviews:

Whoa........2002-09-19

I've never read poetry this honest, this heart-wrenching, this intense, this passionate, this realistic, this humorous, this painful... I could go on for ages, but it would turn into drooling dribble. Olds is amazingly talented. Her work is graphic, as real life is, and not to be taken lightly. Buy it, commit to reading it, appreciate her world view.

you need this.......2002-04-28

Emily Dickinson once said something to the extent of, that when she felt that the top of her head had been taken off, she knew that was true poetry. That's how I felt while reading The Gold Cell, and I assure you, that's a great thing. This is an incredibly powerful read and well worth your time.

An Exhilarating Read, But Not For Everyone. . ........2000-10-13

Sharon Olds delves deeply into the heart of what it means to be human in her collection of poems, "The Gold Cell." I am continually amazed as to how she deals with taboo subjects, such as sex, religion, and morality, with direct and shockingly vivid language. In this particular collection of poems, Olds uses the image of blood to represent various motifs; the blood between family ties, its relation to sex and the body, and even the patriotic sense and the "Americaness" of blood. Using this single word, Olds is able to create an infinite number of images and meanings that go far beyond the common notion that blood is what supplies the body with life. This is by far one of the most influential books of poetry that I have encountered in my career. I do not recommend it to those who are squimish or who are prone to heart-failure at the mention of the word "sex" or "penis." While most of her poems are alluring and evocative, many will shock you with their unabashed treatment of sensitive subjects. For those of you who wish to divulge into the mind of what it means to be human, I whole-heartedly recommend this collection of poetry. Olds' poems not only examine what it means to be human but what it means to be moral beings. Prepare for a journey that will reveal the emotional and raw psychology of the human mind.

Visceral, haunting imagery.......2000-06-18

As in her other volumes of poetry, Olds is a masterful documenter of the flesh. No living American poet writes as authentically about the body as she does -- the exquisite descriptions of sexuality (First Sex is particularly good), motherhood, and aging are not easily forgotten. In my favorite, California Swimming Pool, she captures adolescence so succinctly and alluringly that my own experience of 13 came rocketing back into my consciousness with an intensity which shocked me. Of all her volumes of poetry, this is my favorite.

For Sharon.......2000-03-25

Stars are little for this book. There is a raw solace, poems become picked scabs.

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A poet of shocking and beautiful honesty
Beautiful Beginning
Review of Satan Says by Sharon Olds

Satan Says (Pitt Poetry)
Sharon Olds
Manufacturer: University of Pittsburgh Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Inspirational & Religious | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Gold Cell (Knopf Poetry Series)
The Dead and the Living
The Wellspring: Poems
Blood, Tin, Straw: Poems
The Father

ASIN: 0822953145

Amazon.com

Commenting on Sharon Olds' debut, Linda Pastan wrote that Olds was "clearly a poet to be reckoned with." No kidding. Olds has gone on to create an impressively bold body of work. Notice here "The Language of the Brag," in which Olds describes the heroic deed of childbirth: "I have done what you wanted to do Walt Whitman/ . . . this glistening verb,/and I am putting my proud American boast/ right here with the others." Amen.

Customer Reviews:

A poet of shocking and beautiful honesty.......2001-06-22

"Satan Says" is the first collection of Olds' poetry which I have read (although I've come across her poems once or twice in anthologies). I found the poems in "Satan Says" to be not only startling and brutally honest, but beautifully crafted as well. Her work reminded me greatly of Marie Howe, another female poet writing on (among other things) the body's oft-ignored sensuality even in the face of an abusive world (or family). Her poems seem to fuse the simple craftsmanship and obersational talents of haiku with the frankness of Anne Sexton, giving us a treatise as much related to the body, childbirth, sexuality, dying, and agression as to metaphysics. Genuine and powerful, highly recommended!

Beautiful Beginning.......2000-08-08

This collection handles even the most disturbing personal matters in ways which are both accessible and enlightening to the reader. As human and inspired as her later books.

Review of Satan Says by Sharon Olds.......1999-01-29

This is a brilliant, sad and utterly endearing first collection of poetry by one of North America's most amazing and blistering narrative poets. Michael Ondaatje says, "Sharon Olds's poems are pure fire in the hands--risky, on the verge of falling, and in the end leaping up. I love the roughness and humor and brag and tenderness and completion in her work as she carries the reader through rooms of passion and loss." --look also at Gary Short's "Flying Over Sonny Liston"--wonderful boyhood poems set against a flat Nevada landscape--

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THE UNSWEPT ROOM by Sharon Olds
A Glimpse Over The Wall
I've seen her read...
Great work
The evolution and experimentation of poetry

The Unswept Room
Sharon Olds
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Blood, Tin, Straw: Poems
The Wellspring: Poems
Gold Cell (Knopf Poetry Series)
Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002
The Father

ASIN: 0375709983
Release Date: 2002-09-24

Book Description

From Sharon Olds—a stunning new collection of poems that project a fresh spirit, a startling energy of language and counterpoint, and a moving, elegiac tone shot through with humor.

From poems that erupt out of history and childhood to those that embody the nurturing of a new generation of children and the transformative power of marital love, Sharon Olds takes risks, writing boldly of physical, emotional, and spiritual sensations that are seldom the stuff of poetry.

These are poems that strike for the heart, as Sharon Olds captures our imagination with unexpected wordplay, sprung rhythms, and the disquieting revelations of ordinary life. Writing at the peak of her powers, this greatly admired poet gives us her finest collection.

From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews:

THE UNSWEPT ROOM by Sharon Olds.......2006-04-10

This is not poetry! It is the rantings of a woman obsessed with herself and her anguish. I don't care.

Her verse is sexually explicit and offensive, in particular the poem titled "Sunday Night" in which she recounts the improper, what could even be considered the criminal behavior of her father towards the waitresses at the restaurants her family would frequent. What is worse, when this poem was written and published, her father was deceased, and unable to answer to these statements. I wonder if these behaviors actually took place, and, it not, why would the poet sully the name of her dead father? Also, what impact did this poem have on her mother? Perhaps Ms. Olds can write a poem to address these issues.

I cannot recommend this dreadful "poetry" to anyone.

Sincerely,

Catherine Ross

A Glimpse Over The Wall.......2005-11-25

I'm a guy, 62 years old, day job
as a herder-of-diesel mechanics
in a small shipyard. Voracious appetite
for poetry for the most recent few
years of my life.

Along now comes "The Unswept Room."

The cover art is worth the price
of the book. Inside is a voyage
that defines travel at it's apex.

I'm captured from the beginning with
Olds' fluidity, warmth, and, excuse the use
of a well-worn word in re: poetry,
her clarity.

It's not easy to penetrate the soul
of a man used for years to the
bending of wrenches.
The body of work in this book
set me up for just such a piercing.
Then early this morning, I got to
"April, New Hampshire."
Brought the salty fluid to bathe
my eyes, but none fell out.
A few pages on, "The Learner"
nailed me to wall.

I thought "The Red Queen" had taught
me more than one gender should know
about the other, from a scientific
line of sight.
Ms. Olds has taken this salty old codger
staightaway into her soul, her feminine soul.
I will be forever grateful.

Ladies--You may have kindred candles lit for you.
Gentlemen--You may learn from the light
of those candles.

Lee

I've seen her read..........2003-12-02

Despite some readership's lack of comprehension for the genuis that is Sharon Olds, I am a believer in her as art and artist. I've seen her read (at Oklahoma State University) and was held in awe by her delivery and the new poems she read to the audience. I respect her as a poet, a woman, an artist, an honest voice to depict real-life horror. Poetry is not an artifact for a reader to condemn (or praise too highly). Just observe, open yourself to the experience, and be contently uncomfortably (or uncomfortably content) in the reactions churning within yourself.

Great work.......2003-07-17

Sharon Olds does not disappoint. This is my new favorite book!

The evolution and experimentation of poetry.......2003-07-12

I applaud Sharon Olds for not bowing to the literati's mandate that all poetry must rhyme, be a sonnet, a villanelle, pantoum. This is free verse at its finest. It may not subscribe to a "type" but it is lyrical and poetic just the same. Poetry is evolving and many of today's writers are moving away from the strict rhyme and meter. The poetry in The Unswept Room is some of Olds' finest work. After the brilliant and harrowing poetry about her abuse as a child, this volume finds a more settled Olds starting a new chapter in her life. Bravo.

Average customer rating:

Perfect
Honesty, Integrity, Poetry
The Wellspring, by Sharon Olds
TERRIBLE POETRY
TOO SEXUALLY EXPLICIT FOR MY TASTE

The Wellspring: Poems
Sharon Olds
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

The Dead and the Living
Blood, Tin, Straw: Poems
Gold Cell (Knopf Poetry Series)
Satan Says (Pitt Poetry)
The Father

ASIN: 0679765603
Release Date: 1996-01-30

Amazon.com

The theme of Sharon Olds' fifth volume of poetry, The Wellspring is family and the sexual and sensual nature of the creation and sustenance of life--most often her own. From a time in her mother's life that preceded her own birth ("half of me/was deep in her body, dyed egg") to her father's testicles ("my brothers/and sisters are there, swimming by the cinerous/millions") to her son (who "waited inside me so many years/egg in my side before I was born"), her place in the reproductive life of her family is paramount. Even when the ostensible subject of a poem is as public as a campus antiwar demonstration, as in "May 1968," the real topic is creation and procreation: "The mounted police moved, near us/while we sang ... /if my period did not come tonight/I was pregnant."

Book Description

Sharon Olds's dazzling new collection is a sequence of poems that reaches into the very wellspring of life. The poems take us back to the womb, and from there on to childhood, to a searing sexual awakening, to the shock of childbirth, to the wonder and humor of parenthood--and, finally, to the depths of adult love.

Always bold, musical, honest, these poems plunge us into the essence of experience. This is a highly charged, beautifully organized collection from one of the finest poets writing today.

Customer Reviews:

Perfect.......2007-04-10

I will give the other reviews slight credence to the nasty words. some words could be considered 'nasty' words if you are a prude. but that's life. probably the most poignant and introspective book i've ever had the absolute joy to read. how vulnerable most of us would feel describing our most intimate, truthful emotions.

i'm sorry, i realize that people can disagree and not everyone is going to like similar things. but how this?

Honesty, Integrity, Poetry.......2006-12-04

Sharon Olds work is always well-crafted and honest. Shocking to some, perhaps. (Evidently it does disturb Catherine Ross, whose anti Sharon Olds crusade from April of this year is so transparent--each of her neg reviews written in the same voice, though supposedly penned by different reviewers.) As a man, I have always had a great respect for Olds' writing, her views into the world and her ability to somehow transform pain from the past into something greater and more life-affirming. You will love this book, unless you are profoundly prudish.

The Wellspring, by Sharon Olds.......2006-09-16

The people who wrote the incredibly off negative reviews of this book do not understand contemporary poetry. If you don't like this book because of its real world language and content, which is only a small part of the book, by the way, you are a prude or a snob. Sharon Olds rocks--she is brave and honest and writes what is real. We don't live in Victorian England or the Middle Ages anymore, do we? These poems are beautifully written and are about life--love, kids, hate, childhood, everything. Thank God poetry does not have to only be about flowers and birds and oh how lovely everything is.

TERRIBLE POETRY.......2006-04-20

The only thing I can think to say about this book of poems is that they are TERRIBLE. I've never heard so may nasty words -
I mean really nasty, sex words, that do not belong in decent books. I feel ashamed to have read them, and cannot recommend this book to anyone.

TOO SEXUALLY EXPLICIT FOR MY TASTE.......2006-04-16

As I was reading this book, I came across many poems that were far too sexually explicit for my taste, to name a few: "The First," "Early Images of Heaven" and "Full Summer." I found these poems to be highly offensive, and improper for the general audience.

Had I been warned of the book's sexually explicit content ahead of time, I would not have read it. I believe that it should be so marked on the cover so potential readers know what they are
getting into.

Average customer rating:

Blood, Tin, Straw
Sharon Olds
Manufacturer: Jonathan Cape
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Average customer rating:

Is everyone else reading the same book?
not just carbon based
Life, at its best, is poetry
She Gives Her Soul
Sharon Olds, the double, double dare of poets

Blood, Tin, Straw: Poems
Sharon Olds
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

The Wellspring: Poems
The Father
The Dead and the Living
Gold Cell (Knopf Poetry Series)
Satan Says (Pitt Poetry)

ASIN: 0375707352
Release Date: 1999-10-05

Amazon.com

In such previous collections as The Gold Cell and The Dead and the Living, Sharon Olds tends to draw her impetus from the sexual landscape. The same might be said of the poems in Blood, Tin, Straw. Here, however, the libido is less invariably at center stage. Instead, Olds embraces her favorite subject--the body--in many different guises: as an object of love, desire, reproduction, and decay.

At its best, Blood, Tin, Straw captures effervescent moments with delectable poignancy. In "The Necklace," for example, the narrator recalls a falling strand of pearls that "spoke in oyster Braille on my chest." (She likens the pearls to the snake in the Garden of Eden, yet this beaded serpent seems more intimately related to her own family romance.) And in "My Father's Diary"--itself a strange precursor to the poems in The Father--Olds identifies the chronicle of a life with its departed creator: <blockquote> My father dead, who had left me
these small structures of his young brain--
he wanted me to know him, he wanted
someone to know him.
</blockquote> Still, Olds has a tendency to trip over her own misspent innuendo. One poem in particular, "Coming of Age, 1966," collapses under the weight of a fabricated personal nostalgia, as the poet conflates her own writer's block with Nick Ut's famous photograph of a napalmed Vietnamese girl: "Every time / I tried to write of the body's gifts, / the child with her clothes burned off by napalm / ran into the poem screaming." Olds pins the blame for this atrocity (and for her writer's block!) on Lyndon Johnson. Yet the photo dates from 1972, which lets LBJ off the hook and points the finger at Richard Nixon. It may seem ludicrous to condemn a poem for being factually incorrect. However, the entire argument here is predicated upon Johnson's culpability in delaying the narrator's "entrance into the erotic." Offensive and overwrought, "Coming of Age, 1966" exemplifies Olds's worst poetic impulses. She does, it should be said, retain much of her appeal in Blood, Tin, Straw. Yet there's still a sense that she's substituting a tried-and-true trademark for her customary, earnest ease. --Ryan Kuykendall

Book Description

Customer Reviews:

Is everyone else reading the same book?.......2006-08-08

Sharon Olds, unflinchingly, has written the same poem over and over again and called it a book. It's one thing to write with the same topic in mind, but each poem seems like an exact duplicate from the one that precedes it, never giving any new insight.

The language is often strong, but the New Republic put it best:

"Sharon Olds's poems are certainly everything that testimony should be: sincere, resounding, unambiguous, consolatory. But just as certainly they are not art."

not just carbon based.......2001-05-22

The words of Olds' poems in this book encompass such daring, personal subjects that I was left stunned. Who else but Sharon Olds could make a beautiful poem about watching menstrual blood flow into the toilet by comparing it to ballet dancers? Who else would push the enevelope of public disgust enough to compare vaginal secretion and diamonds? She speaks and glorifies the unmentionable and ugly. In this way, she truly remakes the female body as she writes of it. The experience of reading Olds is not just intellectual; it is a visceral enlightenment.

Life, at its best, is poetry.......2000-07-29

Sharon is a relative of mine, but before I knew that I knew her poetry. Again and again she has inspired me with the power she puts into her poetry--this collection is purely that, a collection, and claims to be nothing more, which is perhaps the most powerful aspect of her work. I look at my work and hers, and no one could deny that we think on the same wavelength...but yet....there is something unexplainable in her poems that I can never grasp, and that she rules.

She Gives Her Soul.......2000-04-25

to every poem and thus, the reader. Old's newest book of poems has given me the light to transcend the hoi poloi of ordinary verse. Long live a true vates!

Sharon Olds, the double, double dare of poets.......2000-04-11

This book of poetry is unique both in style and content. I am reminded of a statement made by Sharon Olds in a reading of hers that I attended where she was talked about her surprise when another poet revealed to her that the events in one of his poems never occurred. When he turned it around and asked if everything she wrote about came from personal experience, she response was, "Well, of course, always." However, it isn't simply the fact that she writes from her life's experience, because that can be said of many of the poets writing today. It is the honesty and the revelation wrought from her experiences that make her work like a four dimensional object, where one is not expecting the angle that one gets as the object turns.

There is also another kind of surprise that occurs in almost every poem. It is an undercurrent of violence, violence intimated, violence implied, violence thought, and violence that has occurred. And yet, the violence in Olds' work does not quite meet our expectations, which have been shaped and pounded by a deluge of film, news and docudrama. Olds doesn't seem to want to shock us, because she makes us believe that there is only one sensible conclusion. She accomplishes this by the depth and originality of each argument. There is such a purity of revelation behind each statement that the reader finds himself spellbound by the rationale, and privileged to find himself a new member of her sublime revolution.

Average customer rating:

Bold View on a Father/Daughter Relationship

A Stunning, Personal Work

The Father

Genius

Authentic encounter with the experience of my father's death

The Father
Sharon Olds
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

20th Century | Poetry | United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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Olds, Sharon | ( O ) | Authors, A-Z | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Blood, Tin, Straw: Poems

The Dead and the Living

Gold Cell (Knopf Poetry Series)

The Wellspring: Poems

Satan Says (Pitt Poetry)

ASIN: 0679740023
Release Date: 1992-04-21

Customer Reviews:

Bold View on a Father/Daughter Relationship.......2005-03-03

I agree with everything the positive reviewers said. This is a pretty bold exploration of a relationship most of us have but few of us take the time to examine. I like that Olds isn't afraid to take risks. Maybe she does repeat herself -- but that's the risk you run when you write poetry. Usually your subject is yourself and how you move inside this world and relate to other people.

A Stunning, Personal Work.......2002-01-17

I first read this collection some years back, and was incredibly moved at the time. Since then, I've gone through a similiar experience in my own family, so returning to this book actually provided some sense of closure. Regardless, it is a tremendous effort, and a beautiful one. Sharon Olds is, without doubt, the best living poet in America, and that's saying a lot.

The Father.......1999-12-25

This is one of the most eloquent readings I have ever come across. Ms. Olds powerful use of metaphor to describe the tormented relationship she had with her father is insightful and inspiring. This should be required reading for any young female (indeed people of all genders and ages) struggling to find a means for remaining not only sane, inspite of the insanity in to which some of us are born, but how to remain caring, compassionate and creatively involved with your surroundings, despite the chaos of whatever personal hell you must survive to do so.

Genius.......1999-06-10

This is one of the best books I have ever read and Olds is a major talent, not just in the world of autobiographical poetry... but in the world of international literature. ---

Authentic encounter with the experience of my father's death.......1999-05-18

My father died a month ago, after four years of illness. I was with him when he died, and I went to Amazon to look for a book that would help me to interact with the extraordinary experience of the death of my father. Sharon Olds' book was far more than I had hoped to have been able to find. I have been carrying it with me for two weeks now and reading passages over and over. She has written the poems I would have written had I been a poet in the middle of the experience of my father's dying. Exceptional and moving.

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Selected Poems
Sharon Olds
Manufacturer: Cape Poetry
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Authors:

Authors

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