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The Wellspring
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.
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.
88 pages, Paperback
First published January 30, 1996
16 people are currently reading
609 people want to read
About the author
Sharon Olds
86 books764 followersBorn in San Francisco on November 19, 1942, Sharon Olds earned a B.A. at Stanford University and a Ph.D. at Columbia University.
Her first collection of poems, Satan Says (1980), received the inaugural San Francisco Poetry Center Award. Olds's following collection, The Dead & the Living (1983), received the Lamont Poetry Selection in 1983 and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Her other collections include Strike Sparks: Selected Poems (2004, Knopf), The Unswept Room (2002), Blood, Tin, Straw (1999), The Gold Cell (1997), The Wellspring (1995), and The Father (1992), which was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
About Olds's poetry, one reviewer for the New York Times said, "Her work has a robust sensuality, a delight in the physical that is almost Whitmanesque. She has made the minutiae of a woman's everyday life as valid a subject for poetry as the grand abstract themes that have preoccupied other poets."
Olds's numerous honors include a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Ploughshares, and has been anthologized in more than a hundred collections.
Olds held the position of New York State Poet from 1998 to 2000. She currently teaches poetry workshops at New York University's Graduate Creative Writing Program as well as a workshop at Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island in New York. She was elected an Academy Chancellor in 2006. She lives in New York City.
Her first collection of poems, Satan Says (1980), received the inaugural San Francisco Poetry Center Award. Olds's following collection, The Dead & the Living (1983), received the Lamont Poetry Selection in 1983 and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Her other collections include Strike Sparks: Selected Poems (2004, Knopf), The Unswept Room (2002), Blood, Tin, Straw (1999), The Gold Cell (1997), The Wellspring (1995), and The Father (1992), which was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
About Olds's poetry, one reviewer for the New York Times said, "Her work has a robust sensuality, a delight in the physical that is almost Whitmanesque. She has made the minutiae of a woman's everyday life as valid a subject for poetry as the grand abstract themes that have preoccupied other poets."
Olds's numerous honors include a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Ploughshares, and has been anthologized in more than a hundred collections.
Olds held the position of New York State Poet from 1998 to 2000. She currently teaches poetry workshops at New York University's Graduate Creative Writing Program as well as a workshop at Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island in New York. She was elected an Academy Chancellor in 2006. She lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 74 reviews
April 29, 2011
Pretty poems mostly about her husband's scrotum.
Read
September 3, 2015My favorite thing about Olds' poetry is her obsession with the physical body, and that's here in full force (although with maybe one or two too many poems about dicks). Been working my way slowly though this one all summer, and have mostly really enjoyed it. Best poem: His Father's Cadaver.
May 18, 2025
Wet and falling from a woman.
November 22, 2013
Sharon Olds’ book, The Wellspring is a life-story of poems. Separated into four parts, the poems are narrative snapshots of confessional scenes and interactions. Each poem is written with candor and grace. The sections move from before the speaker’s birth to her mischievous childhood, to an unabashed sexual awakening into childbirth, the adoration of her children, and culminate with the wholly matured love between her and her husband.
Her craft and plainness of language lend to her authenticity. Olds speaks of her (the speaker's) natural carnal enjoyment of a penis in her mouth, and the elation she found in killing her sister’s fish without the veils of overly poetic language or the protection of cryptic euphemisms. She reveals each part of the self as the situation requires—sometimes sweet, often tender, delightfully dirty and occasionally mean. It is not only the content of the poems that tell the story. This book brims with emotion, is thoughtfully crafted, and skillfully organized in an effort to tell her whole story.
Dirty Memories
The boy down the street dug a pit, in his yard,
four feet deep, and watered it,
and asked us girls, one by one,
to come over and play, to stand on the edge
and close our eyes, and he pushed us into
the pit. The mud was glossy, he seemed
hardly to notice us, he just
wanted to push another one in.
And someone dared the girl up the street
to touch a piece of dog-do on the sidewalk,
and when she picked it up he dared her
to eat it, I can see the soft disc of it
on the edge of her new front tooth. We climbed
the pig-iron gates at the foot of the street,
gates which we did not know marked
a border of a neighborhood
signed over, in secret, to Christians, who were white,
and Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant,
we threw pebbles at college boys in convertibles
and ran through a windowless garage over
a studded, steel turntable,
my calves weak and hot with excitement.
And heat spread in my chest in fifth grade when I
offered orange juice to that child in the lunchroom,
then told him there wasn’t any—Do you want
orange juice? Well, there isn’t any—
to see his face small as my brother’s
crumple, like the thinnest paper
cup. I’m talking about the power of putting
poison into the bowl with my sister’s
fish. My chest was hot as I poured,
I’m saying I was glad.
Her craft and plainness of language lend to her authenticity. Olds speaks of her (the speaker's) natural carnal enjoyment of a penis in her mouth, and the elation she found in killing her sister’s fish without the veils of overly poetic language or the protection of cryptic euphemisms. She reveals each part of the self as the situation requires—sometimes sweet, often tender, delightfully dirty and occasionally mean. It is not only the content of the poems that tell the story. This book brims with emotion, is thoughtfully crafted, and skillfully organized in an effort to tell her whole story.
Dirty Memories
The boy down the street dug a pit, in his yard,
four feet deep, and watered it,
and asked us girls, one by one,
to come over and play, to stand on the edge
and close our eyes, and he pushed us into
the pit. The mud was glossy, he seemed
hardly to notice us, he just
wanted to push another one in.
And someone dared the girl up the street
to touch a piece of dog-do on the sidewalk,
and when she picked it up he dared her
to eat it, I can see the soft disc of it
on the edge of her new front tooth. We climbed
the pig-iron gates at the foot of the street,
gates which we did not know marked
a border of a neighborhood
signed over, in secret, to Christians, who were white,
and Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant,
we threw pebbles at college boys in convertibles
and ran through a windowless garage over
a studded, steel turntable,
my calves weak and hot with excitement.
And heat spread in my chest in fifth grade when I
offered orange juice to that child in the lunchroom,
then told him there wasn’t any—Do you want
orange juice? Well, there isn’t any—
to see his face small as my brother’s
crumple, like the thinnest paper
cup. I’m talking about the power of putting
poison into the bowl with my sister’s
fish. My chest was hot as I poured,
I’m saying I was glad.
Read
September 6, 2018This is a beautiful collection of poems. Divided into four sections which are merely numbered, but might be crudely labelled: birth, adolescense, adulthood, and death, the poems deal with the stages of human existence, and are bold, stark, erotic, and unflinching in their descriptions of the activities of human life.
My favorite was "Mrs. Krikorian", which tells of a gradeschool savior and wonders, who might have once rescued this savior. It was impossible not to think of the refugees roiling every corner of the world.
My favorite was "Mrs. Krikorian", which tells of a gradeschool savior and wonders, who might have once rescued this savior. It was impossible not to think of the refugees roiling every corner of the world.
September 24, 2022
Sharon Olds is a beautiful poet. When I’m older and experience motherhood, I think I’ll be able to relate a lot more to some of these poems. I could still appreciate how extraordinary they were, but I know they’ll hit harder after I’ve experienced more life!!!!
November 1, 2008
The poems that touched me the most were the ones in which Olds imagines what life must have been like for her parents before she was born (e.g. "Visiting My Mother's College") as well as well as all of the poems about her own children in Part 3 of book. For me, these poems from her own perspective as a mother, especially "The Bonding" about the bond between her son and daughter and "High School Senior" about her love for her daughter, made me aware of just how much our parents must love us. There is also a very touching poem in this section of the book about the conception of one of her children called called "The Last Birthday at Home."
February 5, 2008
Each time I read this book, different poems stand out as my favorites. My favorite this time around is a poem about her daughter, as she looks through college applications, that goes something like "Just as I was a daughter inside my mother's life, I am a mother inside my daughter... I have yet to be born."
May 14, 2011
Sharon Olds is amazing. That is all.
March 17, 2019
3 1/2 stars
June 30, 2021
This is my very favorite book of poetry. It's what I aspire to each time I write.
June 10, 2025
Sharon Olds is a relentlessly sexual poet, so much so that it goes beyond any noble claims toward “pushing the bounds” and “opening the way for others.” It is, pure and simple, a fascination of Olds’. Some, even myself, would point at this running theme and call it “brave” or “unflinching” or whatever else you please. And maybe it is. Maybe it really does open the way for others. Even so, it needs to be grappled with, setting aside the guise of social activism. One needs to confront this poet’s forthright and rather active sexuality. To make peace with it. There can be no looking past the subject matter, as though the ‘true heart’ lay behind it, buried under all the bodily effigies. The work talks about penises and boobies and vaginas; it is inseparable from and integral to the writer.
Take a poem like “I Love It When” from the book’s second section (almost entirely devoted to sex). The speaker relishes the weight of her partner “steady on me as tons of water” as her “heart swells / to a taut purple boxing glove.” The pubic bone of her lover becomes “ a pyramid set / point down on the point of another / —glistening fulcrum.” Cue erotic images of flowers with gigantic stems unfolding in silence. The work is competently done, but what, I ask, separates it from any of the numerous Sharon Olds poems which rehearses the same material, like “Sunday Night in the City” from Satan Says, her first book of poetry? Olds is more interesting, I find, when she has a foreign vehicle to talk about what is actually very familiar, routine, and mundane. In “The Dragons,” for example, the speaker is not participant but voyeur, watching two lizards mating from her window. The dispassionate observations, taking place “in the lens of my binoculars” are far more exciting, being, as they are, less sagged down by every other confessionalist poem about intercourse, especially Olds’.
Except for the poems that feel like they distance themselves from Olds’ previous work, The Wellspring is an artistic regression, even using the same loose four-part thematic structure as Satan Says—daughterhood, wifehood, motherhood, and a “journey” further onwards. “Lament” is another poem in this volume, one about motherhood, that manages to sidestep the generalized regression, also by focusing on a specific object, (in this case, a shattered cow butter dish), as a vehicle for a meditation on nostalgia and transience. ‘They grow up so fast’ isn’t exactly fresh territory, but Olds makes it useful by personalizing the trope, lending the details of her own life to the music, but not letting the one take over the other.
What “Lament” and “The Dragons” have—and what too much of this volume lacks—is an aesthetic distance, something Olds has never been entirely comfortable with. But at a point in her career when she’s plumbed all her traumas, when so few subjects seem novel diaristtcally employed, it is time to broaden, to seek a larger world, further from an id. Done right, it can be more personal, not less.
Take a poem like “I Love It When” from the book’s second section (almost entirely devoted to sex). The speaker relishes the weight of her partner “steady on me as tons of water” as her “heart swells / to a taut purple boxing glove.” The pubic bone of her lover becomes “ a pyramid set / point down on the point of another / —glistening fulcrum.” Cue erotic images of flowers with gigantic stems unfolding in silence. The work is competently done, but what, I ask, separates it from any of the numerous Sharon Olds poems which rehearses the same material, like “Sunday Night in the City” from Satan Says, her first book of poetry? Olds is more interesting, I find, when she has a foreign vehicle to talk about what is actually very familiar, routine, and mundane. In “The Dragons,” for example, the speaker is not participant but voyeur, watching two lizards mating from her window. The dispassionate observations, taking place “in the lens of my binoculars” are far more exciting, being, as they are, less sagged down by every other confessionalist poem about intercourse, especially Olds’.
Except for the poems that feel like they distance themselves from Olds’ previous work, The Wellspring is an artistic regression, even using the same loose four-part thematic structure as Satan Says—daughterhood, wifehood, motherhood, and a “journey” further onwards. “Lament” is another poem in this volume, one about motherhood, that manages to sidestep the generalized regression, also by focusing on a specific object, (in this case, a shattered cow butter dish), as a vehicle for a meditation on nostalgia and transience. ‘They grow up so fast’ isn’t exactly fresh territory, but Olds makes it useful by personalizing the trope, lending the details of her own life to the music, but not letting the one take over the other.
What “Lament” and “The Dragons” have—and what too much of this volume lacks—is an aesthetic distance, something Olds has never been entirely comfortable with. But at a point in her career when she’s plumbed all her traumas, when so few subjects seem novel diaristtcally employed, it is time to broaden, to seek a larger world, further from an id. Done right, it can be more personal, not less.
December 31, 2022
These are sometimes crushing slice-of-life poems about being a child, raising children, and letting those children go off into their separate lives. My favorite section was the second half of Part 3, including this one-two punch:
"From "Physics" (p. 66)
From "My Son the Man" (p. 67)
"From "Physics" (p. 66)
Now she tells me
that if I were sitting in a twenty-foot barn,
with the doors open at either end,
and a fifty-foot ladder hurtled through the barn
at the speed of light, there would be a moment
-- after the last rung was inside the barn
and before the first rung came out the other end --
when the whole fifty-foot ladder would be
inside the twenty-foot barn, and I believe her,
I have thought her life was inside my life
like that. When she reads the college catalogues, I
look away and hum. I have not grown up
yet, I have lived as my daughter's mother
the way I had lived as my mother's daughter,
inside her life. I have not been born yet.
From "My Son the Man" (p. 67)
I know I must get ready,
get over my fear of men now my son
is going to be one. This was not
what I had in mind when he pressed through me like a
sealed trunk through the ice of the Hudson,
snapped the padlock, unsnaked the chains,
and appeared in my arms. Now he looks at me
the way Houdini studied a box
to learn the way out, then smiled and let himself be manacled.
October 1, 2023
Forgot how much I love reading poetry at the start of the days. This collection of poems captures sexuality, birth, family and love so descriptively. Felt like I could understand the realities of motherhood and change and braces and illness and care in these poems
POTB: Prayer During That Time
I would sometimes find myself leaning on a doorframe, a woman without belief, praying:
Please don't let anything happen to him.
Don't take his thoughts away, don't go up to his small, dazzled brain on the high wire and push it off.
Don't leave him drooling in his cereal. And yet if that's the only way we can have him please let us have him-even if all we can see in his face are the avenues, empty and spacious-and put a bib on him again, and spoon him brown sugar, and hominy, and sit with him for the rest of our days, wanting to keep him here even though he might be in hell. But alive! But alive in hell.
POTB: Prayer During That Time
I would sometimes find myself leaning on a doorframe, a woman without belief, praying:
Please don't let anything happen to him.
Don't take his thoughts away, don't go up to his small, dazzled brain on the high wire and push it off.
Don't leave him drooling in his cereal. And yet if that's the only way we can have him please let us have him-even if all we can see in his face are the avenues, empty and spacious-and put a bib on him again, and spoon him brown sugar, and hominy, and sit with him for the rest of our days, wanting to keep him here even though he might be in hell. But alive! But alive in hell.
April 1, 2022
One of the powers of Sharon Olds’s work is how she seemingly has no subject matter that she is not willing to explore. The pieces in this volume are personal and daring. For example, she reminisces about her parents in love and how she wishes she could tell them not to marry due to the strife and tragedy that they cannot know is ahead of them. She is forthcoming in her willingness to talk about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her parents. Perhaps, the best pieces in this collection capture the tender and joyous moments she shares of her own motherhood, and also she shares sad anecdotes and memories of knowing they will grow up and head out on their own. In a handful of other poems, she shares intimate moments with her husband, some of which are incredibly lovely and tender.
January 24, 2024
I have only been reading poetry seriously for a couple of years. A few months ago, I ran across a poem by Sharon Olds and found it very intriguing. After reading a couple more in the Paris Review archives, I picked up a collection of hers, The Wellspring, at a local bookstore. I was not disappointed. The Wellspring is a collection of her work covering several stages of her life, from youth to young adulthood to parenthood. Her command of language and rhythm was excellent and provoked a whole gamut of emotions. She joins Jim Harrison as my favorite poet.
September 23, 2021
i think that these poems were wonderfully and artfully written, but i don’t think that they really spoke to where i am at in life. i appreciated part 3 the most, where she talks about raising her children. i think it gave me some insight into how my mom may feel right now and in the past.
it was in
my care, the creature of her spine, like the first
chordate, as if history
of the vertebrate had been placed in my hands.
it was in
my care, the creature of her spine, like the first
chordate, as if history
of the vertebrate had been placed in my hands.
May 28, 2024
I really thought I would like this more since I had enjoyed her anthologized work. But ... the arrangement here marched through her life and family without grabbing me. There was much to admire in her craft, not much stuck with me, even though much of what she writes about is slice of life. "Adolescence" and "This Hour" I liked best. The rest REALLY ran together,
but I don't regret reading it and I will seek out another book by Olds to read.
but I don't regret reading it and I will seek out another book by Olds to read.
December 8, 2024
Read this on the subway on the way to work and all the baby imagery made me feel like I was reborn each morning. Normally I have trouble getting behind motherhood poetry but there were some really visceral images of the fragility of children’s bodies that toe a terrifying/tender line which kept me going. Sometime her similes felt a little slow—felt like they were repeating the same thing twice that could have been just the description or the metaphor
February 19, 2022
"I sit
on the toilet in the night, you are somewhere in the room,
I open the window and snow has fallen in a
steep drift, against the pane, I
look up, into it,
a wall of cold crystals, silent
and glistening, I quietly call to you
and you come and hold my hand and I say
I cannot see beyond it. I cannot see beyond it."
on the toilet in the night, you are somewhere in the room,
I open the window and snow has fallen in a
steep drift, against the pane, I
look up, into it,
a wall of cold crystals, silent
and glistening, I quietly call to you
and you come and hold my hand and I say
I cannot see beyond it. I cannot see beyond it."
February 1, 2022
For me, it's her similes and metaphors. They are so original and specific and I feel them in a visceral way, such as this, 'then I refuse to remember, the way a drunkard forgets'. I'm not sure I could even articulate well what she means here, but I feel it, which is why she's so good.
March 22, 2025
"I have not grown up yet, I have lived as my daughter's mother the way I had lived as my mother's daughter, inside her life. I have not been born yet."-"Physics"
favorite poems: "After Making Love in Winter," "Necking," "The Cast," "Lament," "Physics"
favorite poems: "After Making Love in Winter," "Necking," "The Cast," "Lament," "Physics"
August 4, 2018
Wow! Where to start??!! Sharon Olds’ descriptive poetry is beyond amazing! This book takes you on a journey from her birth to finding love to becoming a seasoned mother. I absolutely loved it!
August 31, 2018
3.5 stars
May 30, 2021
sometimes you read a poem that makes you Sit Down
March 12, 2023
Beautiful poetry that I would not want to be the subject of lol
August 12, 2023
i started to cry half way thru the first page
September 26, 2023
Not my favorite by Olds, but still a beautiful book.
Notable quote: Slow is knowing where I come from, who I might be, like a dream of matter looking for spirit.
Notable quote: Slow is knowing where I come from, who I might be, like a dream of matter looking for spirit.
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February 19, 2024she's mother for this
May 9, 2024
it’s the kind of art that makes you feel whole inside
Displaying 1 - 30 of 74 reviews