Selected Poems

New
paperback

$15.43

Michael Ondaatje has called Sharon Olds's poetry 'pure fire in the hands' and cheered the 'roughness and humour and brag and tenderness and completion in her work as she carries the reader through rooms of passion and loss'. This rich selection - made by the author - 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 fulfilment of marriage, the wonder of children - but each re-casting penetrates ever more deeply, enriched by new perceptions and conceits. A powerful distillation of the best work from one of America's most gifted and widely read poets, drawn from her seven published volumes, this is a testament to a remarkable writer's depth, range and continuing development.

Synopsis

Michael Ondaatje has called Sharon Olds's poetry 'pure fire in the hands' and cheered the 'roughness and humour and brag and tenderness and completion in her work as she carries the reader through rooms of passion and loss'. This rich selection - made by the author - 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 fulfilment of marriage, the wonder of children - but each re-casting penetrates ever more deeply, enriched by new perceptions and conceits. A powerful distillation of the best work from one of America's most gifted and widely read poets, drawn from her seven published volumes, this is a testament to a remarkable writer's depth, range and continuing development.

$15.43

Quantity

5 in stock

More Information

Format: paperback
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Published:
ISBN 10: 0224076884
ISBN 13: 9780224076883
Book Overview: The new Selected Poems from the bestselling winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry.

Media Reviews

Her best work exhibits a lyrical acuity which is both purifying and redemptive. She sees description as a means to catharsis, and the end result is impossible to forget... Her poetry is remarkable for its candour, its eroticism, and its power to move -- David Leavitt
Olds remains too little-known in the UK...readers new to her will be astounded -- Kate Clanchy * Independent *
If any reading is 'essential', this is it -- Carol Rumens
Sharon Olds explores her own experience with an intransigent honesty and fiery dignity. The reader might flinch at the intimacy, but Olds strikes straight out for the truth -- Rachel Campbell-Johnston * The Times *
The attention to line, the superbly focused detail, the way her autobiographical detail strikes, shines, deepens, spreads: this, surely is the sound the confessional hordes have been trying to utter since Lowell, the right road that is missed so easily -- Glyn Maxwell

Author Bio

Sharon Olds was born in San Francisco, educated at Stanford and Columbia universities, and has lived for many years in New York City. Her books have won many awards over the years. Her last collection, Stag's Leap, won the T.S. Eliot Prize and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize. In 2016 she won the Wallace Stevens award for her `outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry'.