Sharon Olds

Sharon Olds (born November 19, 1942) is an American poet and author of eight volumes of poetry.

Life

Sharon Olds was born in 1942 in San Francisco. She was raised as a "hellfire Calvinist." After graduating from Stanford University she moved east to earn a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University. Olds has been the recipient of many awards including the San Francisco Poetry Center Award, the Lamont Poetry Prize, The National Books Critics Circle Award, and the T. S. Eliot Prize. She currently teaches creative writing at New York University.

Poetry

Her book, The Wellspring (1996), shares with her previous work the use of raw language and startling images to convey truths about domestic and political violence, sexuality, family relationships, and the body. The reviewer for The New York Times hailed Olds's poetry for its vision: "Like Whitman, Ms. Olds sings the body in celebration of a power stronger than political oppression."[1]

Her first collection, Satan Says (1980), received the inaugural San Francisco Poetry Center Award. The poems explore intensely personal themes with unflinching physicality, enacting what Alicia Ostriker describes as an "erotics of family love and pain."(28). Olds’ second volume, The Dead and the Living, won the 1983 Lamont Poetry Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Following The Dead and the Living, Olds published The Gold Cell, (1987) The Father, (1992), The Wellspring, (1996), Blood, Tin, Straw, (1999), and The Unswept Room, (2002). The Father, a series of poems about a daughter’s loss of her father to cancer, was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and was a finalist for The National Book Critics’ Circle Award. In the words of Michael Ondaatje, her poems are "pure fire in the hands." Olds’ work is anthologized in over 100 collections, ranging from literary/poetry textbooks to special collections. Her poetry has been translated into seven languages for international publications. She was the New York State Poet Laureate for 1998-2000. Sharon Olds is considered one of the best living poets of our time. Her poem, "I Go Back to May 1937", was recited in the 2007 film "Into the Wild" to illustrate the family dysfunction of the main character. She also wrote a poem called "Bread".

Letter to Laura Bush

In 2005, First Lady Laura Bush invited Olds to the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. Olds responded, declining the invitation in an open letter published in the October 10th, 2005 issue of The Nation. The letter closes, "So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it."

Bibliography

• Satan Says (1980)
• The One Girl at the Boys' Party (1983)
• The Dead and the Living (1984)
• The Victims(N/A)
• The Gold Cell (1987)
• The Father (1992)
• The Wellspring (1996)
• Blood, Tin, Straw (1999)
• The Unswept Room (2002)
• Strike Sparks: Selected Poems (2004)

External links

• Audio recording (.mp3) of Sharon Olds reading from her work at the Key West Literary Seminar, January 2003
• Poems by Sharon Olds at PoetryFoundation.org
• Open Letter to Laura Bush
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Modern American Poetry's Sharon Olds section
• Reviews of Blood, Tin, Straws
• Olds' Poet laureate page