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Balladz
Arguably America's greatest living poet, Sharon Olds enters her eightieth year with a book for our a book of fear, fragility and love of life'She proves triumphantly evergreen'OBSERVER , *POETRY BOOK OF THE MONTH*'You will follow wherever she leads'NEW YORK TIMES'The most accessible poet of her generation'TELEGRAPH'At the time of have-not, I look at myself in this mirror,' writes Olds in this self-scouring, exhilarating collection, which opens with a section of quarantine poems, followed by her 'Amherst Balladz', honouring Emily Dickinson - 'she was our Girl - our Woman - / Man enough - for me' - and leads to celebrations of lost friends and her childhood, young womanhood, and old age all mixed up together. She examines her white privilege, sees her mother 'flushed and exalted at punishment time', celebrates the human body, even in ageing, and looks with wonder at the natural world and how we've spoiled it.Renowned for her poetry of searing honesty, sexual frankness and brave originality, Sharon Olds' new book emerges 'at the eleventh hour of the end of the world', from the time of plague, this time of loss, where she can look at the world and her life and tell us plainly 'love is the love of who we are, it is a form of knowing.'
176 pages, Paperback
First published October 4, 2022
63 people are currently reading
2409 people want to read
About the author
Sharon Olds
77 books768 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 86 reviews
October 25, 2022
“Balladz”, a National Book Finalist ….. was not for me.
I thought it was dreadful.
I listen to the audiobook (3 hours and 33 minutes long) and I kept on listening…. with so much distaste— I haven’t disliked a book this much in a long time. So much so — I find my own dislike puzzling.
Sharon Olds - the author read it. Her voice sent waves of unpleasant emotions through me.
I just did not get it - or connect with it - or admire it.
I thought it was dreadful.
I listen to the audiobook (3 hours and 33 minutes long) and I kept on listening…. with so much distaste— I haven’t disliked a book this much in a long time. So much so — I find my own dislike puzzling.
Sharon Olds - the author read it. Her voice sent waves of unpleasant emotions through me.
I just did not get it - or connect with it - or admire it.
January 11, 2023
In her distinguished career spanning over five decades, Sharon Olds had produced some of the most bold, candid, and evocative poetry in contemporary literature. She has done so in part due to her inimitable style of prose-like verses that embody a rhythm and lyricism unmatched by her peers. In pursuing subjects about her parents, family, and significant others, Olds has never held back in revealing her innermost thoughts and sharing her intimacies. Abuse and dysfunctionality, lust and desire, love and rejection, she has explored their impact using unvarnished language and striking details that can unsettle, surprise, and arouse. Olds is a writer/poet who I cherish because she has amazed me so many times with her courage and brilliance in meditating on her life’s hardships and joys. That’s why it pains me to admit that Balladz falls far short of offering a continuance of her remarkable work. The candor and honesty are still obvious, but the emotion has fizzled into stagnancy. This entire volume feels like a weaker rehash of ideas she’s examined so much better in her previous books. The first section of Balladz has some mildly engaging vignettes about the trials of the COVID-19 quarantine, but the rest of the book drags and plods. Wordiness and filler, this book feels like it was filling the time. If Balladz is your introduction to Olds’s work, please don’t assess her on these poems. Seek out any of her other collections, especially her early work, and allow yourself to be mesmerized.
September 28, 2022
Longlisted for the National Book Award, Balladz by Sharon Olds was my introduction to the poet. Social media friends told me that Olds was a favorite poet. Although I read contemporary poetry in my younger years, I became out of touch after decades of living in rather isolated communities. I am thrilled to be able to discover all that I have been missing.
Olds style, so direct and filled with visceral images, can be jarring. The first section of the book are quarantine poems. Secluded in a rural cabin, Olds battles with loneliness–and mice, setting traps, dealing with the blood bath afterwards. She writes a poem to the centipede that she also kills, noting, “Of course I am a killer. I am/human.” And in the next poem she asks, “Is it impossible/for me to be good. Is it possible for us/ to try harder to kill this planet/slower. Would I kill this animal again/it it did its undulation above me/alone the wall. Is this the best that I can/do this morning to work against the killing/done in my name all over the earth.”
She writes angrily about the death of George Floyd. And in Anatomy Lesson for the Officer, of the human connection we share: “And that is a human throat you are kneeling/on. That is our throat, our brother’s,/our son’s, maybe our father’s throat. /That is your mother’s, your father’s, your son’s,/your daughter’s throat. That is your daughter’s throat.”
Amherst Ballads are in the style of Emily Dickinson, and I will need to take my time with them.
The Balladz section includes Best Friend Ballad, in which she remembers “the power of her house, and of the approach to it,” then recalls the girl’s death, praying “for a sleep tonight in which, 9 and 9, we can hold each other in a green dream.” I was transported back to when I was 9 years old, walking to my best friend’s 1900s farm house down the road, filled with grief knowing that she had died decades ago of disease.
And in Ballad Torn Apart, Olds vividly describes the car accident that killed a friend. In Album from a Previous Existence, she writes about her mother and childhood, and it is this harsh mother, who she talks about in earlier poems as tying her in a chair and beating her that is so hard to encounter, my own mother who, for all her flaws, was so giving, her love was like a tether that could not break with death.
Olds writes about her body, her self-image, the self-acceptance of growing old. “Now I’m better at talking to people without/thinking my face makes them want to throw up,”
I have not read all the poems. Poems on the death of her father and husband. There are some poems I need to go back to; I rushed through them, disturbed or confused. But then, is there any end to studying a poem, none the less nearly two hundred pages of poetry? It takes a life time. At least.
I received a free book from A. A. Knopf. My review is fair and unbiased.
Olds style, so direct and filled with visceral images, can be jarring. The first section of the book are quarantine poems. Secluded in a rural cabin, Olds battles with loneliness–and mice, setting traps, dealing with the blood bath afterwards. She writes a poem to the centipede that she also kills, noting, “Of course I am a killer. I am/human.” And in the next poem she asks, “Is it impossible/for me to be good. Is it possible for us/ to try harder to kill this planet/slower. Would I kill this animal again/it it did its undulation above me/alone the wall. Is this the best that I can/do this morning to work against the killing/done in my name all over the earth.”
She writes angrily about the death of George Floyd. And in Anatomy Lesson for the Officer, of the human connection we share: “And that is a human throat you are kneeling/on. That is our throat, our brother’s,/our son’s, maybe our father’s throat. /That is your mother’s, your father’s, your son’s,/your daughter’s throat. That is your daughter’s throat.”
Amherst Ballads are in the style of Emily Dickinson, and I will need to take my time with them.
The Balladz section includes Best Friend Ballad, in which she remembers “the power of her house, and of the approach to it,” then recalls the girl’s death, praying “for a sleep tonight in which, 9 and 9, we can hold each other in a green dream.” I was transported back to when I was 9 years old, walking to my best friend’s 1900s farm house down the road, filled with grief knowing that she had died decades ago of disease.
And in Ballad Torn Apart, Olds vividly describes the car accident that killed a friend. In Album from a Previous Existence, she writes about her mother and childhood, and it is this harsh mother, who she talks about in earlier poems as tying her in a chair and beating her that is so hard to encounter, my own mother who, for all her flaws, was so giving, her love was like a tether that could not break with death.
Olds writes about her body, her self-image, the self-acceptance of growing old. “Now I’m better at talking to people without/thinking my face makes them want to throw up,”
I have not read all the poems. Poems on the death of her father and husband. There are some poems I need to go back to; I rushed through them, disturbed or confused. But then, is there any end to studying a poem, none the less nearly two hundred pages of poetry? It takes a life time. At least.
I received a free book from A. A. Knopf. My review is fair and unbiased.
April 25, 2023
Actual rating: 2.5 stars.
In a word, visceral. Whether in rage or shocking description, this angry collection is raw and erudite and often difficult to swallow. Olds definitely had something to say in her poems, which I could feel even in those entries whose meanings I couldn’t intuit. I think Olds also enjoys the utilization of the shock factor; there were a few stanzas that actually managed to shock an audible gasp from me, which I consider fairly difficult to achieve as I’ve read pretty widely for the entirety of my adult life. There were motifs that repeated themselves throughout different portions of the collection, which I found clever, but the choices of motifs, from the omnipresence of rodents to the over abundance of dashes, were often off-putting to me personally.
I appreciate the concrete language Olds uses, but the messages weren’t always clear to me. The earlier poems, those written during Quarantine, felt almost bombastic, forcefully angry without clearly conveying the “why” of that rage. The second section, Amherst Balladz, is the only section that really threw me stylistically. There was an over abundance of dashes, a style choice that I have never vibed with outside of Emily Dickenson’s work. But the back half of the collection, particularly the final section of Elegies, was more intelligible and relatable for me personally. The rage that so permeates was softened here, and was more glaringly focussed on a single topic: loss. This resonated, as loss is something I very much understand.
Olds and I have radically different worldviews, but I don’t think that is what hampered my enjoyment of the collection. I appreciated being let into Olds’s pain, and I mourn the vast and varied traumas she has faced and overcome since childhood. I respect this collection, and Olds as a poet. But I found no enjoyment here, nothing that sparked any strong positive emotion. I include righteous anger in that list. All I felt was discomfort, and I wasn’t in the right headspace to appreciate it. While I’m glad to have read this collection, I readily admit that it wasn’t for me in any way.
In a word, visceral. Whether in rage or shocking description, this angry collection is raw and erudite and often difficult to swallow. Olds definitely had something to say in her poems, which I could feel even in those entries whose meanings I couldn’t intuit. I think Olds also enjoys the utilization of the shock factor; there were a few stanzas that actually managed to shock an audible gasp from me, which I consider fairly difficult to achieve as I’ve read pretty widely for the entirety of my adult life. There were motifs that repeated themselves throughout different portions of the collection, which I found clever, but the choices of motifs, from the omnipresence of rodents to the over abundance of dashes, were often off-putting to me personally.
I appreciate the concrete language Olds uses, but the messages weren’t always clear to me. The earlier poems, those written during Quarantine, felt almost bombastic, forcefully angry without clearly conveying the “why” of that rage. The second section, Amherst Balladz, is the only section that really threw me stylistically. There was an over abundance of dashes, a style choice that I have never vibed with outside of Emily Dickenson’s work. But the back half of the collection, particularly the final section of Elegies, was more intelligible and relatable for me personally. The rage that so permeates was softened here, and was more glaringly focussed on a single topic: loss. This resonated, as loss is something I very much understand.
Olds and I have radically different worldviews, but I don’t think that is what hampered my enjoyment of the collection. I appreciated being let into Olds’s pain, and I mourn the vast and varied traumas she has faced and overcome since childhood. I respect this collection, and Olds as a poet. But I found no enjoyment here, nothing that sparked any strong positive emotion. I include righteous anger in that list. All I felt was discomfort, and I wasn’t in the right headspace to appreciate it. While I’m glad to have read this collection, I readily admit that it wasn’t for me in any way.
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November 7, 2024Not my favorite book by my favorite poet, but still a good read. If you want to start with Sharon Olds I'd recommend reading this only AFTER "Odes" and "Stag's Leap."
December 22, 2022
I followed Olds fairly closely early in her career, then drifted away, no fault of her work. Returning to this late work--it's openly and effectively positioned that way--I'm now going to return to what I've overlooked. Balladz is one of the very best volumes in what's been a very very good year for poetry. It combine several tangents: a set of reflections on covid quarantine; searching explorations of her life as an older woman whose early work was fired (and still is) by erotic energies; a confrontation with the ghosts of her abusive mother; mourning poems for dead friends/lovers; and a wonderful set of balladz addressed to Emily Dickinson.
I can't remember the last time I read a book that combined so many types of material but still felt like a strange organic whole.
Many of the poems assume their power from their position in sequences, but some of the ones that stood out for me were "Not Once"; the entire "Amherst Balladz" sequence; "Best Friend Ballad"; "Genesis"; "When They Told Me God Could Read My Mind"; "Dream Near the End"; "Wasn't Afraid Of"; "When They Say You Have Maybe Three Months Left"; and "Komodo", with the closing line that provides the downbeat for the collection: "Love is the love of who were are, it is a form of knowing."
I've underrated Olds in the past. Mea culpa and I won't moving ahead.
I can't remember the last time I read a book that combined so many types of material but still felt like a strange organic whole.
Many of the poems assume their power from their position in sequences, but some of the ones that stood out for me were "Not Once"; the entire "Amherst Balladz" sequence; "Best Friend Ballad"; "Genesis"; "When They Told Me God Could Read My Mind"; "Dream Near the End"; "Wasn't Afraid Of"; "When They Say You Have Maybe Three Months Left"; and "Komodo", with the closing line that provides the downbeat for the collection: "Love is the love of who were are, it is a form of knowing."
I've underrated Olds in the past. Mea culpa and I won't moving ahead.
Read
December 28, 2023real! long even among shaz's group. i'M trying to juggle the subsections in my head, whether they come together, how they stand alone. actually I wonder if this would be a different experience as a series of bound pamphlets, like anne carson's float. As we've come to expect from Olds, many clumped-up jagged poems that we can keep for a good long time & study & so we should. I have my doubts about stamina thru the whole thing... but I really can't complain, it's hard not to read balladz and wonder whether sharon wonders if this is her last book. It doesn't read terminally, as something like CK Williams' Falling Ill does, there's an energy throwing towards the future that gives me hope Olds will be with us for a minute yet. Thematically, there's a feeling of coming to terms though, loose ends and so. The ending here reciprocates that of One Secret Thing, and now I'm curious as to whether this is a longstanding motif! closing so ! at the deathbed
I'm keen to reread it, take it slower. I kind of like the throw-it-all at the wall approach, oddly most reminded of Satan Says, tonally, in much of this. still think
I'm keen to reread it, take it slower. I kind of like the throw-it-all at the wall approach, oddly most reminded of Satan Says, tonally, in much of this. still think
January 30, 2025
What a privilege, to read this late-in-life book of Old's poems about love, relationships, and the worn beauty of the human body both in life and in death. Having read her previous work, I am amazed at how far and deep her poems still reach. Not to be missed. Thanks to Netgalley for this ARC.
August 4, 2023
"I seem to be writing, but I’m listening for what you want,
it would be my joy to give it to you.
There is so much joy on the earth even as it is being dis-inhabited
by the other animals, and over-inhabited by us—as it is being
knocked off course and smoked and drowned.
While we have food, let us share it and eat it.
There is so much action required of us now.
And pleasure is required of us.
O my darlings, so much pleasure is required of us."
~from Improv, Sharon Olds, Balladz, pp.150/
------------------------------------------
Sharon Olds has been one of my favorite American poets ever since I first became aware of her some 30+ years ago. But I haven't followed her or read any of her newer work over the past 20 years or so.
Lately, I've begun reflecting back on the initial days of the Covid pandemic and how much the global quarantine has affected me, so this book seemed like a good selection as I saw the first section dealt with the pandemic.
While I did find the pandemic poems resonant, and appreciated the Emily Dickenson poems, and was moved by her reflections on the parental abuse she suffered, I was most moved by the many poems that dealt with the loss of her beloved soulmate, Carl. While Olds has a good 20 years on me, I have found myself becoming more and more aware of my mortality as my body begins to fail in more and more little ways and I take stock of more and more celebrities, friends, and acquaintances my age (and younger!) passing away.
Olds poems about dealing with Carl's cancer, his decline in hospice, death, and her changed life alone and spiritual connection to him beyond his passing are rich, deeply moving and have caused me to reflect deeper on the fleeting time that remains and to be treasured with my beloved Ellen.
As others have commented, this book seems like a departure from her earlier books and I too found it a little uneven, particularly in the middle sections. But ideally, we all change as we mature and grow old. While the raw anger in the poems dealing with George Floyd's murder and our selfish destruction of the planet is unlike the Sharon Olds poems I am accustomed to, they give witness to the fact that not only is the writer a different evolved person all these years later, we as a society have changed, but collectively, it would be more apt to say it's been a devolution.
I give thanks for the poetry of Sharon Olds and would highly recommend Balladz for any fan of her previous work.
------------------------------------------
"...May we eat the knowledge of
suffering, may we eat the bitter
waste of the false food we have fed
others. May we eat it in pain, and in time."
~from May 14, 2020, Sharon Olds, Balladz, pp.15
it would be my joy to give it to you.
There is so much joy on the earth even as it is being dis-inhabited
by the other animals, and over-inhabited by us—as it is being
knocked off course and smoked and drowned.
While we have food, let us share it and eat it.
There is so much action required of us now.
And pleasure is required of us.
O my darlings, so much pleasure is required of us."
~from Improv, Sharon Olds, Balladz, pp.150/
------------------------------------------
Sharon Olds has been one of my favorite American poets ever since I first became aware of her some 30+ years ago. But I haven't followed her or read any of her newer work over the past 20 years or so.
Lately, I've begun reflecting back on the initial days of the Covid pandemic and how much the global quarantine has affected me, so this book seemed like a good selection as I saw the first section dealt with the pandemic.
While I did find the pandemic poems resonant, and appreciated the Emily Dickenson poems, and was moved by her reflections on the parental abuse she suffered, I was most moved by the many poems that dealt with the loss of her beloved soulmate, Carl. While Olds has a good 20 years on me, I have found myself becoming more and more aware of my mortality as my body begins to fail in more and more little ways and I take stock of more and more celebrities, friends, and acquaintances my age (and younger!) passing away.
Olds poems about dealing with Carl's cancer, his decline in hospice, death, and her changed life alone and spiritual connection to him beyond his passing are rich, deeply moving and have caused me to reflect deeper on the fleeting time that remains and to be treasured with my beloved Ellen.
As others have commented, this book seems like a departure from her earlier books and I too found it a little uneven, particularly in the middle sections. But ideally, we all change as we mature and grow old. While the raw anger in the poems dealing with George Floyd's murder and our selfish destruction of the planet is unlike the Sharon Olds poems I am accustomed to, they give witness to the fact that not only is the writer a different evolved person all these years later, we as a society have changed, but collectively, it would be more apt to say it's been a devolution.
I give thanks for the poetry of Sharon Olds and would highly recommend Balladz for any fan of her previous work.
------------------------------------------
"...May we eat the knowledge of
suffering, may we eat the bitter
waste of the false food we have fed
others. May we eat it in pain, and in time."
~from May 14, 2020, Sharon Olds, Balladz, pp.15
October 27, 2022
2.5
There is some great stuff here, but it begins to bore by the 90-page mark in a 170-page collection. It feels a bit slapdash in its configuration as a collection. Some really evocative confessional poems regarding white privilege and sex in old age and abuse done by her mother. Her writing on the pandemic did not make me cringe. Even when the themes vary, the style contorts into a series of monochromatic doldrums with hints of ecstatic light. The main issue is probably that, for me, the first two sections (Quarantine, Amherst Balladz) rang truest. Olds comes closest to poetic genius in her collisions: the grotesque and the beautiful, the abstract and the concrete, the arcane and the contemporary, the personal and the political. Beautiful words beget beautiful words, but, at some point, my attention waned more more and never began to wax anew.
There is some great stuff here, but it begins to bore by the 90-page mark in a 170-page collection. It feels a bit slapdash in its configuration as a collection. Some really evocative confessional poems regarding white privilege and sex in old age and abuse done by her mother. Her writing on the pandemic did not make me cringe. Even when the themes vary, the style contorts into a series of monochromatic doldrums with hints of ecstatic light. The main issue is probably that, for me, the first two sections (Quarantine, Amherst Balladz) rang truest. Olds comes closest to poetic genius in her collisions: the grotesque and the beautiful, the abstract and the concrete, the arcane and the contemporary, the personal and the political. Beautiful words beget beautiful words, but, at some point, my attention waned more more and never began to wax anew.
December 11, 2022
For years I've been following the poetry of Sharon Olds. I love her deep honesty and attentiveness to her inner musings and what's going on in the world around her.
This collection begins with some poems written during the early stages of the pandemic and weaves through writing about loved ones and the aging process. We are in similar stages of the life journey, thus I really relate to her work.
While reading, I reminisced about a workshop I took with Olds years ago at Esalen in Big Sur and how it changed my life. We all sat on pillows in a circle on the floor of the Fritz Pavilion listening to Olds read her own poetry, then read and critique ours. This marked a big turning point in my life as a poet!
This collection begins with some poems written during the early stages of the pandemic and weaves through writing about loved ones and the aging process. We are in similar stages of the life journey, thus I really relate to her work.
While reading, I reminisced about a workshop I took with Olds years ago at Esalen in Big Sur and how it changed my life. We all sat on pillows in a circle on the floor of the Fritz Pavilion listening to Olds read her own poetry, then read and critique ours. This marked a big turning point in my life as a poet!
April 25, 2023
I'm a longtime fan of Satan Says, her first collection. Got this one for the "Amherst Ballads," the Emily Dickinson imitations inspired by life in quarantine. Comes off as pretty one-dimensional, in my opinion. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say that about Sharon Olds, but reading about someone else's (very privileged) experience in quarantine in a cabin in the woods does not slap.
January 27, 2023
Moving bits of life from a poet whose work I'd greatly admired over the years. Written when she was in her late 70s, Sharon Olds reflects on those moments of life that are sweet and sometimes bitter. Pain intertwines with love and desire. What once was real can never return but her gorgeous prose will live many lifetimes over.
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November 19, 2022I find this collection difficult to rate. Olds is a favorite of mine but the first section, Quarantine. was a struggle for me. However, I did enjoy the other sections much better.
December 20, 2022
“Balladz" by Sharon Olds proves once again that she has her pulse firmly on America and the mind-numbing journey of aging, growing old and dying. The first book I was introduced to by her was "Stags Leap" which got its name from the Stags Leap wine she shared with her former husband and partner while sitting on the porch pondering about the dying day. "Stags Leap" covers the year before and the year after her divorce and it was and is one of the finest collections of poetry I have ever read. Right up there with "Citizen: An American Lyric" by Claudia Rankine and "Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman.
"Balladz" covers the ground later in her life from around 2010 to and through 2022. A lot happened to her and to us during that same period of time. Her condemnation of and white guilt associated with the death of George Floyd in “Quarantine” and “Anatomy Lesson for the Officer” reminds me that racism and racial injustice anywhere is racism and racial injustice everywhere. The racist death of one (1) man is a tragedy and the racist death of millions is a statistic, somewhat paraphrasing Khrushchev there, but Sharon Olds' poetry is the classic example of "shock and awe". It shocks you as you read it and sends you deeper into awe as this wordsmith works her magic.
Among other interesting and sad facts I learned this time around: Sharon Olds is tall, like really freaking tall -- 6' 3" or more. Her mother apparently beat her regularly even after she sprouted up in junior high school and well into her young adult years; possibly, beyond. While her mother was deeply flawed individual, Sharon loved her all the same but still was no longer afraid of her mother within an hour of her death. Yep, that comment hit pretty close to home with me.
As she heads into the final turn of her career and blindly groping in the dark toward the last journey called death, I hope to be reading more of her work well into the distant, unknowing future. I admire this wordsmith and her "mad skillz" and will pull "Balladz" from the shelf and return to the twilight zone that is the end of her life and the end of her partner's and mother's lives reminding us that tomorrow is not guaranteed for any of us. "Yesterday is a cashed check and tomorrow is a promissory note, but today, TODAY is cash on the barrel, Baby!" Live fullest and in the "now" because you won't be disappointed if and when tomorrow does not come.
"Balladz" covers the ground later in her life from around 2010 to and through 2022. A lot happened to her and to us during that same period of time. Her condemnation of and white guilt associated with the death of George Floyd in “Quarantine” and “Anatomy Lesson for the Officer” reminds me that racism and racial injustice anywhere is racism and racial injustice everywhere. The racist death of one (1) man is a tragedy and the racist death of millions is a statistic, somewhat paraphrasing Khrushchev there, but Sharon Olds' poetry is the classic example of "shock and awe". It shocks you as you read it and sends you deeper into awe as this wordsmith works her magic.
Among other interesting and sad facts I learned this time around: Sharon Olds is tall, like really freaking tall -- 6' 3" or more. Her mother apparently beat her regularly even after she sprouted up in junior high school and well into her young adult years; possibly, beyond. While her mother was deeply flawed individual, Sharon loved her all the same but still was no longer afraid of her mother within an hour of her death. Yep, that comment hit pretty close to home with me.
As she heads into the final turn of her career and blindly groping in the dark toward the last journey called death, I hope to be reading more of her work well into the distant, unknowing future. I admire this wordsmith and her "mad skillz" and will pull "Balladz" from the shelf and return to the twilight zone that is the end of her life and the end of her partner's and mother's lives reminding us that tomorrow is not guaranteed for any of us. "Yesterday is a cashed check and tomorrow is a promissory note, but today, TODAY is cash on the barrel, Baby!" Live fullest and in the "now" because you won't be disappointed if and when tomorrow does not come.
April 10, 2023
Beautiful, sad but not, challenges a one dimensional idea of grief. Some of the parts about Covid, BLM, and Olds’ privilege during all of this were odd.
February 4, 2024
“o to have known as pirate girls / each other’s reckless truth”
September 30, 2022
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review. If you are already acquainted with Sharon Olds' work, this collection is like coming home to a warm, familiar place. Olds, who doesn't shy away from laying bare her wounds and dissecting them in minute detail, takes on the pandemic in the first section with stark quarantine poems. The middle section is composed of ballads in the style of Emily Dickinson, which are both brief and luminous, and within the entire collection runs a new feeling of Olds confronting her white privilege as she reflects on her past. I wasn't disappointed with this collection and have followed her work for the last few decades. In her 70s now, Olds hasn't lost her spark, and her long sentences and striking imagery show well in this collection.
January 30, 2023
Is it impossible
for me to be good. Is it possible for us
to try harder to kill this planet
slower. Would I kill this animal again
if it did its undulation above me
along the wall. Is this the best that I can
do this morning to work against the killing
done in my name all over the earth.
(from “Yes”)
Who says the forms of art require joy?
Could not rot suffice, or anger?
The tip of my tongue with the blister on it
is a wounded feeler. From underground up,
I am like a wasted festival.
A squirrel stands up next to the wall
and puts one paw over her heart.
And me, I pledge allegiance to the sweat and salt.
(from “Narcissus Takes Another Look at Household Tasks”)
May we eat the knowledge
of suffering, may we eat the bitter
waste of the false food we have fed
others. May we eat it in pain, and in time.
(from “May 14, 2020”)
for me to be good. Is it possible for us
to try harder to kill this planet
slower. Would I kill this animal again
if it did its undulation above me
along the wall. Is this the best that I can
do this morning to work against the killing
done in my name all over the earth.
(from “Yes”)
Who says the forms of art require joy?
Could not rot suffice, or anger?
The tip of my tongue with the blister on it
is a wounded feeler. From underground up,
I am like a wasted festival.
A squirrel stands up next to the wall
and puts one paw over her heart.
And me, I pledge allegiance to the sweat and salt.
(from “Narcissus Takes Another Look at Household Tasks”)
May we eat the knowledge
of suffering, may we eat the bitter
waste of the false food we have fed
others. May we eat it in pain, and in time.
(from “May 14, 2020”)
April 26, 2023
"At the time of have-not, I look at myself in this mirror"--Sharon Olds
Sharon Olds turned 8o November, 2022. I, also aging, find myself in recent years reading the "later" poems of favorite poets, like Donald Hall, Charles Simic and so on. Often these are not their best poems, but I like visiting old friends and appreciate how they are navigating their lives and art. What seems remarkable t0 me about Olds is that she still has a very familiar energy and drive. Maybe she's softening a little, good for her, but the poetry is strong--blunt, as always, honest, and still powerful. And she is at this point exploring forms--ballads, elegies. Balladz is the title of this book (2022). Other books written in her seventies include Odes (2016) and Arias (2019). I have not yet read these though have read most of Olds's earlier work, a big fan.
This collection seems to honor one of her muses, Emily Dickinson. She also looks more directly than ever at her white privilege. She's maybe a bit more caring than I recall? Oh, still writes boldly about sex! There are pandemic/quarantine poems, as she thinks of this time we are living in "at the eleventh hour of the end of the world." She celebrates life, though, even her aging body. The strongest poems here are in the last section, elegies about the death of her partner, Carl Wallman, a former cattle breeder. She never looks away! I really admire so much of that aspect of her work.
When They Say You Have Three Months Left
In my sleep, I dreamed that I came to your grave –
and what lay between us? The beautiful uncut
hair of the grass, and topsoil like the rich
dirt in which you buried our sheets
after I left you – our DNA – near where
you later buried your golden dog.
Also between us the new ceiling
of plain pine, and the linen garment
your fresh-washed unbreathing body had been clothed in,
and the earthen chamber music of wild,
underworld, spiral creatures,
and your tissue I have loved, and within it the ancient
primordial man of your skeleton.
Narwhal tusk, elephant ivory,
icon of your narrow-hipped male power
I rode, rowing in eden. But
it was no dream, I lay broad waking,
and you have not died yet. I can read this to you
in a week, in front of the woodstove,
the flames curving up to points and disappearing,
or beside the pond, the water rippling,
ovals of hemlock and beech changing places in it.
Sometimes you fall asleep as I’m talking to you.
And you’ve said: I want you to be reading me a poem when I die.
And, Let’s not stop writing to each other when I’m dead.
And when I’m dead too! I said. When we met,
though we fell in love immediate and permanent,
we could not make a two-soul union,
nor when I left – each of us had to
work, on ourselves, for years, to get there.
And now we are there! Maybe this has been
death all along! Maybe life is a
kind of dying. Maybe this has been heaven.
Sharon Olds turned 8o November, 2022. I, also aging, find myself in recent years reading the "later" poems of favorite poets, like Donald Hall, Charles Simic and so on. Often these are not their best poems, but I like visiting old friends and appreciate how they are navigating their lives and art. What seems remarkable t0 me about Olds is that she still has a very familiar energy and drive. Maybe she's softening a little, good for her, but the poetry is strong--blunt, as always, honest, and still powerful. And she is at this point exploring forms--ballads, elegies. Balladz is the title of this book (2022). Other books written in her seventies include Odes (2016) and Arias (2019). I have not yet read these though have read most of Olds's earlier work, a big fan.
This collection seems to honor one of her muses, Emily Dickinson. She also looks more directly than ever at her white privilege. She's maybe a bit more caring than I recall? Oh, still writes boldly about sex! There are pandemic/quarantine poems, as she thinks of this time we are living in "at the eleventh hour of the end of the world." She celebrates life, though, even her aging body. The strongest poems here are in the last section, elegies about the death of her partner, Carl Wallman, a former cattle breeder. She never looks away! I really admire so much of that aspect of her work.
When They Say You Have Three Months Left
In my sleep, I dreamed that I came to your grave –
and what lay between us? The beautiful uncut
hair of the grass, and topsoil like the rich
dirt in which you buried our sheets
after I left you – our DNA – near where
you later buried your golden dog.
Also between us the new ceiling
of plain pine, and the linen garment
your fresh-washed unbreathing body had been clothed in,
and the earthen chamber music of wild,
underworld, spiral creatures,
and your tissue I have loved, and within it the ancient
primordial man of your skeleton.
Narwhal tusk, elephant ivory,
icon of your narrow-hipped male power
I rode, rowing in eden. But
it was no dream, I lay broad waking,
and you have not died yet. I can read this to you
in a week, in front of the woodstove,
the flames curving up to points and disappearing,
or beside the pond, the water rippling,
ovals of hemlock and beech changing places in it.
Sometimes you fall asleep as I’m talking to you.
And you’ve said: I want you to be reading me a poem when I die.
And, Let’s not stop writing to each other when I’m dead.
And when I’m dead too! I said. When we met,
though we fell in love immediate and permanent,
we could not make a two-soul union,
nor when I left – each of us had to
work, on ourselves, for years, to get there.
And now we are there! Maybe this has been
death all along! Maybe life is a
kind of dying. Maybe this has been heaven.
July 15, 2023
I had forgotten how visceral and graphic Olds can be. Bodily fluids, bleeding wounds, dead lactating mice, squeamish descriptions of centipedes on dressers abound in this collection. Here in her own inimitable voice and in varying poetic forms, Olds grapples with loneliness, boredom, and class privilege during the pandemic; rage and race privilege during historic times of violence against Black lives; sexual appetite and declining health as one ages; grief and guilt for people and times past; and recognition that, even so, much joy still exists in daily life.
In some ways I feel that I grew up with Sharon Olds, having first read her in my early 20s and having stuck by her for the last 40 years. And when I say “grew up with,” I mean that through her poems I learned about many of the ways life can be vicious to so many people who have experienced things that I did not, sheltered by my race, a happy childhood, and a safe home. Her poem “Quarantine” is illustrative:
In the “Quarantine” section, yes, the poems are about life during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they are also about art, racism, privilege, words, child abuse, aging, Black lives lost to white brutality, and the daily tasks of survival. In “Narcissus Takes Another Look at Household Tasks,” the speaker takes care of domestic business inside and out (getting rid of a dead mouse, cleaning the bird bath) during “the 32nd week of solitary, safe and, well, / spoiled”:
In “Monday, November 2, 2020” she captures the frustration of quarantine isolation that hit us like a bad oxymoron: the inability to concentrate or act in spite of having increased time and opportunity (for many of us) to do things we normally would have enjoyed:
The “Amherst Balladz” section, with its poems of tribute to Emily Dickinson in form, content, and allusion, I found less successful than other sections. Or maybe I just tired of all the dashes.
But overall, this collection shows that in spite of the pandemic, her age, her memories, or her health, Olds is still a force of nature to be reckoned with: a survivor and a powerful voice in the world of poetry.
In some ways I feel that I grew up with Sharon Olds, having first read her in my early 20s and having stuck by her for the last 40 years. And when I say “grew up with,” I mean that through her poems I learned about many of the ways life can be vicious to so many people who have experienced things that I did not, sheltered by my race, a happy childhood, and a safe home. Her poem “Quarantine” is illustrative:
I am of a people of thieves,
and beaters of children. I was not beaten
because of my race, but because I belonged
to my mother….
And I did not deserve to be beaten, but now
I see it—I have not ever, in my life,
Been beaten outside my gender, or my family, or my color. (9)
In the “Quarantine” section, yes, the poems are about life during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they are also about art, racism, privilege, words, child abuse, aging, Black lives lost to white brutality, and the daily tasks of survival. In “Narcissus Takes Another Look at Household Tasks,” the speaker takes care of domestic business inside and out (getting rid of a dead mouse, cleaning the bird bath) during “the 32nd week of solitary, safe and, well, / spoiled”:
Who says the forms of art require joy?
Could not rot suffice, or anger? …
A squirrel stands up next to the wall
and puts one paw over her heart.
And me, I pledge allegiance to the sweat
and salt. (30)
In “Monday, November 2, 2020” she captures the frustration of quarantine isolation that hit us like a bad oxymoron: the inability to concentrate or act in spite of having increased time and opportunity (for many of us) to do things we normally would have enjoyed:
What do I do now, that’s human? I eat
(lucky), I sleep (lucky), sometimes I do
something like reading –
running my eyes over language like a brush
over hair. (31)
The “Amherst Balladz” section, with its poems of tribute to Emily Dickinson in form, content, and allusion, I found less successful than other sections. Or maybe I just tired of all the dashes.
But overall, this collection shows that in spite of the pandemic, her age, her memories, or her health, Olds is still a force of nature to be reckoned with: a survivor and a powerful voice in the world of poetry.
July 30, 2023
I think I must have discovered Sharon Olds' book The Gold Cell in my late teens or early twenties, and then worked my way backwards as well as reading her releases when they came out. I wanted to write poetry at the time and Olds' work was a revelation. I could feel the literary skill gathering the words together but it was her voice—personal, intense and confessional—that supported me to believe that I could write about my own life and identity, so long as it was crafted well. The flexibility and experience of poetry could make an incident or memory even more intense or sharp or considered in its telling.
So, I find it astonishing that Olds is now 80 and still writing such dynamic work, as published in the 2022 collection Balladz. Let's just talk about the poem, 'His Birthday'. On her partner's 75th birthday, Olds masturbates, and orgasms four times. I have never read such a vital declaration of an older woman's sexual pleasure. And no one but Olds could charge the conversational confession of the poetry with an image like 'the full chrysanthemum / in each chamber of the sex's heart' or 'a spider dropping down / to fix a hypotenuse for a web' as a metaphor for her exhausted hand.
I found the poetry in this collection to be looser, more ecstatic and stranger than before, often conflating time, jumping off from a childhood memory or a random present thought to the poem's core subject. I loved the acknowledgement of the world outside her poems – politics – which I don't remember from previous work. Not being familiar with Emily Dickinson, I didn't quite 'get' Olds' Dickinson ballads (named the Amherst Ballads). And as other reviewers mentioned, it feels a little surprising that the same old memories of her mother (and being tied to a chair as punishment by her parents) keep resurfacing in these poems, when elsewhere she has such an amazing ability to be so precisely, luminously in the present moment. Though one of the same reviewers said that Olds has earned the right to write about anything she wants to. I don't mean to be judgemental but I think life would be easier and lighter to be able to lay our trauma to rest. But perhaps that's why I've always been so touched by Olds' poetry: the emotion, the complexity. And perhaps I find this collection even more touching than what came before: so much poignancy in the many ballads singing of the dead, and building, building to the most poignant, the last poems for her partner Carl.
So, I find it astonishing that Olds is now 80 and still writing such dynamic work, as published in the 2022 collection Balladz. Let's just talk about the poem, 'His Birthday'. On her partner's 75th birthday, Olds masturbates, and orgasms four times. I have never read such a vital declaration of an older woman's sexual pleasure. And no one but Olds could charge the conversational confession of the poetry with an image like 'the full chrysanthemum / in each chamber of the sex's heart' or 'a spider dropping down / to fix a hypotenuse for a web' as a metaphor for her exhausted hand.
I found the poetry in this collection to be looser, more ecstatic and stranger than before, often conflating time, jumping off from a childhood memory or a random present thought to the poem's core subject. I loved the acknowledgement of the world outside her poems – politics – which I don't remember from previous work. Not being familiar with Emily Dickinson, I didn't quite 'get' Olds' Dickinson ballads (named the Amherst Ballads). And as other reviewers mentioned, it feels a little surprising that the same old memories of her mother (and being tied to a chair as punishment by her parents) keep resurfacing in these poems, when elsewhere she has such an amazing ability to be so precisely, luminously in the present moment. Though one of the same reviewers said that Olds has earned the right to write about anything she wants to. I don't mean to be judgemental but I think life would be easier and lighter to be able to lay our trauma to rest. But perhaps that's why I've always been so touched by Olds' poetry: the emotion, the complexity. And perhaps I find this collection even more touching than what came before: so much poignancy in the many ballads singing of the dead, and building, building to the most poignant, the last poems for her partner Carl.
November 13, 2022
In one of the poems, a 78-year-old Sharon Olds internet-stalks the older brother of her childhood best friend who died when she was nine because she thinks she could maybe want to marry him or at least sleep with him, and that's the kind of old person I want to be someday.
Part 4 was my favorite: Joyful poems about growing old and watching spiders and jumping into cold lakes. The ballads were my favorite to read aloud. The elegy poems about her partner were gutting. Overall, though, Balladz didn't quite work as an introduction to Olds's work. I put it on hold at the library because I had randomly read some of The Wellspring a few months ago, and that collection made me want to read her whole bibliography -- a feeling I still stand by. I just don't think starting here in 2022 is the best way to start. There are so many references, names, memories that I didn't understand.
This piece in the The New York Times by Sam Anderson, though, is a wonderful read regardless of how much you know about Olds.
A few stand-outs:
- "Joined Ballad (on seeing a photograph in 1978 of Karol Wojtyla aka Pope John Paul II)" (80): "I'd been raised to believe that a man could say / if a woman could be a priest or not, / could make her / own choices or not. / I had not thought / whether a Pope could be cute or not."
- "Goodbye" (115) about her father's death: "Goodbye to the pool outside that lies there in the evening / like a dish of heaven, and to the sour cigars / by the water's edge, goodbye to each crushed leaf, / each stain on your strong, dark-white teeth, / each blue curl of smoke that stands there / whole, for a moment, in the air."
- "If I Were to Sing Myself," (126) about aging: "Then I might sing my slow, portly / stroll from my towel, on the sand, toward the water, / my cellulose, my cellulite humps / and humpesses calling Matron! Matron! / (a Maiden forty pounds ago)-- / flesh now rich with kisslessness."
Oh, and the line: "Now I'm better at talking to people without / thinking my face makes them want to throw up" (135). I love her.
Part 4 was my favorite: Joyful poems about growing old and watching spiders and jumping into cold lakes. The ballads were my favorite to read aloud. The elegy poems about her partner were gutting. Overall, though, Balladz didn't quite work as an introduction to Olds's work. I put it on hold at the library because I had randomly read some of The Wellspring a few months ago, and that collection made me want to read her whole bibliography -- a feeling I still stand by. I just don't think starting here in 2022 is the best way to start. There are so many references, names, memories that I didn't understand.
This piece in the The New York Times by Sam Anderson, though, is a wonderful read regardless of how much you know about Olds.
A few stand-outs:
- "Joined Ballad (on seeing a photograph in 1978 of Karol Wojtyla aka Pope John Paul II)" (80): "I'd been raised to believe that a man could say / if a woman could be a priest or not, / could make her / own choices or not. / I had not thought / whether a Pope could be cute or not."
- "Goodbye" (115) about her father's death: "Goodbye to the pool outside that lies there in the evening / like a dish of heaven, and to the sour cigars / by the water's edge, goodbye to each crushed leaf, / each stain on your strong, dark-white teeth, / each blue curl of smoke that stands there / whole, for a moment, in the air."
- "If I Were to Sing Myself," (126) about aging: "Then I might sing my slow, portly / stroll from my towel, on the sand, toward the water, / my cellulose, my cellulite humps / and humpesses calling Matron! Matron! / (a Maiden forty pounds ago)-- / flesh now rich with kisslessness."
Oh, and the line: "Now I'm better at talking to people without / thinking my face makes them want to throw up" (135). I love her.
May 20, 2025
Reading Sharon Old’s Balladz, I kept thinking that some of these poems were too diffuse, not condensed enough into themselves. Consider the shocking admission early on that Olds’ mother frequently tied her to a chair and beat her when she was a child. Olds offers the most eloquent iteration of this subject in “Ballad of the Chair,” but she mentions it, by my calculation, in at least ten other poems. None of them tackle it so directly as the ballad, and although the others are entertaining, I have the weird feeling that they are not destined to live into a volume of selected poems.
But many of these works, specifically ones that are concentrated on a specific topic and handled more or less in one fell swoop—are destined for anthologizing. Poems like “Centipede” and the formally rigorous “Ghazal Confessional.” The extraordinarily evocative transience in “Into Tahoe,” as well as the nail-biting squeamish worry in “To Chase, After the Diagnosis” and “To Chase, During Her Surgery.” Because these standout works don’t water themselves down into a book-length refrain, they (counterintuitively) remain fresher in my mind, fully figured creations that Olds truly seems to have ‘gotten right’ and therefore had no need to revisit. I wish this were just a bouquet of bodies as perfect as those—and that would make this 170-page book a little closer to the slimmer, more common poetry volume with 100 pages or less.
Maybe it’s obsessive to only want “perfect bodies,” and I just sound like fodder for an eating disorder, but I will stand by what I believe in. Olds describes herself as “looking for what was strange, and real, / and true as a dream, and wild as the former earth.” In some of these poems, she has unquestionably found it. In others, she is just looking, albeit with her superhuman eloquence and insight.
But many of these works, specifically ones that are concentrated on a specific topic and handled more or less in one fell swoop—are destined for anthologizing. Poems like “Centipede” and the formally rigorous “Ghazal Confessional.” The extraordinarily evocative transience in “Into Tahoe,” as well as the nail-biting squeamish worry in “To Chase, After the Diagnosis” and “To Chase, During Her Surgery.” Because these standout works don’t water themselves down into a book-length refrain, they (counterintuitively) remain fresher in my mind, fully figured creations that Olds truly seems to have ‘gotten right’ and therefore had no need to revisit. I wish this were just a bouquet of bodies as perfect as those—and that would make this 170-page book a little closer to the slimmer, more common poetry volume with 100 pages or less.
Maybe it’s obsessive to only want “perfect bodies,” and I just sound like fodder for an eating disorder, but I will stand by what I believe in. Olds describes herself as “looking for what was strange, and real, / and true as a dream, and wild as the former earth.” In some of these poems, she has unquestionably found it. In others, she is just looking, albeit with her superhuman eloquence and insight.
May 27, 2023
This is a collection of peaks and dips for me. I've enjoyed Sharon Olds' work in the past, but have never been a member of the 'America's greatest living poet' fan club, and I think Balladz almost perfectly sums up why.
It's ostensibly a 'lockdown/COVID-19'-inspired collection, but thankfully, that doesn't reflect its full breadth. At its very best, it is staggeringly, heartbreakingly powerful. The final component, 'Elegies', has some of the most fearsome, emotive and genuinely tear-jerking ruminations on death I've read for some time. You'd have to have a heart of granite not to be moved by many of the couplets and phrases, which adhere to Olds' reputation as a fearless poet who pulls no punches; take the stark, bullet-esque close to 'Three Views of Him Asleep, His Final Days', or the entirety of 'When The Cancer Has Come Back...'.
But to get to that deeply powerful and connective tissue, you have to get through the rest of the book. It's by no means bad, but it veers from the wilfully inaccessible and beguilingly referential to borderline mundane. Much of Olds' power is clearly in her ability to connect with a wide range of people, considered a composite writer of true feeling and an artful 'poet's poet' at the same time. But 'Amherst Balladz' is only going to be headbangingly cumbersome to those who have never read Emily Dickinson.
There can be no questioning Olds' technical or emotional ability, but for me, only parts of this truly land.
It's ostensibly a 'lockdown/COVID-19'-inspired collection, but thankfully, that doesn't reflect its full breadth. At its very best, it is staggeringly, heartbreakingly powerful. The final component, 'Elegies', has some of the most fearsome, emotive and genuinely tear-jerking ruminations on death I've read for some time. You'd have to have a heart of granite not to be moved by many of the couplets and phrases, which adhere to Olds' reputation as a fearless poet who pulls no punches; take the stark, bullet-esque close to 'Three Views of Him Asleep, His Final Days', or the entirety of 'When The Cancer Has Come Back...'.
But to get to that deeply powerful and connective tissue, you have to get through the rest of the book. It's by no means bad, but it veers from the wilfully inaccessible and beguilingly referential to borderline mundane. Much of Olds' power is clearly in her ability to connect with a wide range of people, considered a composite writer of true feeling and an artful 'poet's poet' at the same time. But 'Amherst Balladz' is only going to be headbangingly cumbersome to those who have never read Emily Dickinson.
There can be no questioning Olds' technical or emotional ability, but for me, only parts of this truly land.
February 25, 2024
Balladz was my introduction to Sharon Olds, and unfortunately, I don't think it should have been. Though I haven't read her other work, it was quickly apparent that these poems weren't her best. I was particularly put off by the "Quarantine" poems, partially on account of my pandemic-induced PTSD (though that's a me problem), but largely because they were the most heavy-handed of the collection. If a poem is about race, I don't need to be hit over the head with the fact that it's about race, certainly not from a Pultizer Prize-winning poet. The same goes for describing then-president Trump as "orange"--I expect something more creative than that.
This isn't to say every poem in the collection is disappointing. Not at all--I was struck by the final section, the second part of the "Elegies," in which Olds follows the progression of her husband's illness, death, and burial. The "Amherst Balladz" were the most amusing bunch, given that I'm a Dickinson devotee and am always curious to see how contemporary poets interact with her work. Still, with some exceptions, I found Balladz fairly monotonous; the poems all began to resemble each other, and by the end of the collection I was ready to stop reading.
I'm not giving up on Olds; even from this underwhelming collection I can see a glimmer of peak poetic prowess. I plan to visit her earlier work, and take this experience as a lesson choosing new-to-me poetry collections more wisely.
This isn't to say every poem in the collection is disappointing. Not at all--I was struck by the final section, the second part of the "Elegies," in which Olds follows the progression of her husband's illness, death, and burial. The "Amherst Balladz" were the most amusing bunch, given that I'm a Dickinson devotee and am always curious to see how contemporary poets interact with her work. Still, with some exceptions, I found Balladz fairly monotonous; the poems all began to resemble each other, and by the end of the collection I was ready to stop reading.
I'm not giving up on Olds; even from this underwhelming collection I can see a glimmer of peak poetic prowess. I plan to visit her earlier work, and take this experience as a lesson choosing new-to-me poetry collections more wisely.
December 13, 2022
Amherst Ballad Four
Outside your Room—in the Wain’s Coat—
Below an Outlet—in the Hall—
Rolled Pill—Armadillo
Gray—Sowbug Eden Shell.
Emerald Head Spiked—with Hair
Arrows—Buzzless Fly—
Barbed Leg cocked—a Quiver
Of Harrows Bristle Thigh.
On your Desk—Oak Penshaft—
Necklaced with Pearl—Iron Nib—
Well of Crystal—Murex Ink—
Collar chased with Hachures of Sheaf.
Lines of Lumen—Curve and Ascend
Your Hurricane Lamp Throat
And Ring its Glass Mouth—and Light—
Your Counterpane—Quilt.
Supine then—on Jute Matting—
I inched my Way—under your Bed—
Sleigh of Cherry Burl. As a Child—
I would Wake—under—in in’s stead.
Now Lanyard on my Wrist—from my Girl—
And Porcupine Quill and Coconut Shell
And Bead Bracelet—from Didi and Major—
And the Jane Austen Pendant—from Lucille.
Rose Quartz—in Sterling—Ring—
From my Elder—Sister—Patricia—
Aquamarine—in White Gold—
From our Mother’s elder Sister—Patricia.
Raiment Guard me—between Flocked
Walls near Small—White—Dress.
Chair to Match—the one I was Trussed to—
Gilt Grain—Cross-Piece of Hitchcock.
When my Mom Tied me—she fed me—by Spoon—
Alphabet Soup.
I Love being—Here alone—
For Everyone.
And Shake Sparks—of Luxury
Onto the Paper Wall—Like a Dog—
Here in your Home—Emily—
Mother of Necessity.
Outside your Room—in the Wain’s Coat—
Below an Outlet—in the Hall—
Rolled Pill—Armadillo
Gray—Sowbug Eden Shell.
Emerald Head Spiked—with Hair
Arrows—Buzzless Fly—
Barbed Leg cocked—a Quiver
Of Harrows Bristle Thigh.
On your Desk—Oak Penshaft—
Necklaced with Pearl—Iron Nib—
Well of Crystal—Murex Ink—
Collar chased with Hachures of Sheaf.
Lines of Lumen—Curve and Ascend
Your Hurricane Lamp Throat
And Ring its Glass Mouth—and Light—
Your Counterpane—Quilt.
Supine then—on Jute Matting—
I inched my Way—under your Bed—
Sleigh of Cherry Burl. As a Child—
I would Wake—under—in in’s stead.
Now Lanyard on my Wrist—from my Girl—
And Porcupine Quill and Coconut Shell
And Bead Bracelet—from Didi and Major—
And the Jane Austen Pendant—from Lucille.
Rose Quartz—in Sterling—Ring—
From my Elder—Sister—Patricia—
Aquamarine—in White Gold—
From our Mother’s elder Sister—Patricia.
Raiment Guard me—between Flocked
Walls near Small—White—Dress.
Chair to Match—the one I was Trussed to—
Gilt Grain—Cross-Piece of Hitchcock.
When my Mom Tied me—she fed me—by Spoon—
Alphabet Soup.
I Love being—Here alone—
For Everyone.
And Shake Sparks—of Luxury
Onto the Paper Wall—Like a Dog—
Here in your Home—Emily—
Mother of Necessity.
January 11, 2025
There’s three things I know for certain when reading a Sharon Old’s poetry book:
1. I will most likely not understand what she’s writing about. (Although, I did read somewhere recently someone saying that poetry isn’t really supposed to be understood and that’s kind of the point.)
2. There will be poems about her mother. She might mention her mother’s genital. This book didn’t, but it was borderline almost.
3. There will be poems about her her divorce / husband. Although this time it was seeing him slowly die.
The first section of this poetry book was okay. The book ws published in 2022, and most of the poems written are when we were in the pandemic in 2020. There are poems about quarantining, about the lost lives of Black men due to police brutality, and Olds acknowledging her privilege as a able bodied white woman.
I didn’t enjoy much the section titled Balladz.
There were — many poems —
written in this — weird format —
so I hated it.
I don’t know why I continue to read Sharon Olds. I’ve read maybe 5 different books of hers now. And out of all of them I’ll only like maybe a handful of the poems.
Regardless, I did like a few poems in this book. The poems about her mother, and grief were touching and came from a personal place.
1. I will most likely not understand what she’s writing about. (Although, I did read somewhere recently someone saying that poetry isn’t really supposed to be understood and that’s kind of the point.)
2. There will be poems about her mother. She might mention her mother’s genital. This book didn’t, but it was borderline almost.
3. There will be poems about her her divorce / husband. Although this time it was seeing him slowly die.
The first section of this poetry book was okay. The book ws published in 2022, and most of the poems written are when we were in the pandemic in 2020. There are poems about quarantining, about the lost lives of Black men due to police brutality, and Olds acknowledging her privilege as a able bodied white woman.
I didn’t enjoy much the section titled Balladz.
There were — many poems —
written in this — weird format —
so I hated it.
I don’t know why I continue to read Sharon Olds. I’ve read maybe 5 different books of hers now. And out of all of them I’ll only like maybe a handful of the poems.
Regardless, I did like a few poems in this book. The poems about her mother, and grief were touching and came from a personal place.
December 26, 2022
There were sections I found myself wanting to skim, in particular the quarantine poems because the strangeness of that time is still so fresh. I think what kept me close to each line was the fact that – until now – I haven't seen a living poet so established, skilled from decades of working at her craft (she's in her 80s now), open up and present work that's so emotional and raw. At times it almost feels messy. Frantic. It left me with even more admiration for her.
The first I'd read by Sharon Olds was Stag's Leap, and in Balladz I found some of the same features of her writing that I fell in love with. How a poem about coming across a dead mouse but ignoring it for several days feels somehow intimate, and the lines describing her crawling into her lover's hospice bed, and pulling up the metal guards on the sides, are heart wrenching yet delivered in that frank way older people describe death. And with the closeness of death present in so many of the poems, she grapples with her own history, her own privileged place in the world, regret, and the aging body. It was a beautiful book of poetry. Hard to read at times.
The first I'd read by Sharon Olds was Stag's Leap, and in Balladz I found some of the same features of her writing that I fell in love with. How a poem about coming across a dead mouse but ignoring it for several days feels somehow intimate, and the lines describing her crawling into her lover's hospice bed, and pulling up the metal guards on the sides, are heart wrenching yet delivered in that frank way older people describe death. And with the closeness of death present in so many of the poems, she grapples with her own history, her own privileged place in the world, regret, and the aging body. It was a beautiful book of poetry. Hard to read at times.
August 27, 2024
When I first read Sharon Olds, I was scared away by the horror of the subjects she conjured up so clearly with her vivid poetic voice. But like life itself, she is capable of both such horror and such beauty, and thankfully this collection is on the kinder side.
They are poems that seem so big and so little at the same time. They swell, vast, with the scope of all the things that take her attention, and yet they are little things that could pass in insignificance if her eye weren’t so magical.
Big things like chasmic life events become small, and small things, minor details in the story become massive, big enough to live on the horizon, like someone’s frown become a rainbow. They swell to giant totems of the moment they are a part of, representing them in a way more profound than the thing itself.
And the poems that close out the book, the ‘elegy’ poems, they feel like elegies for life and love itself, all wrapped up in the last heart of a human being. Those final heartbeats like last words that celebrate the whole life it lived, before being lowered down silent, a red box into the earth’s chest.
They are poems that seem so big and so little at the same time. They swell, vast, with the scope of all the things that take her attention, and yet they are little things that could pass in insignificance if her eye weren’t so magical.
Big things like chasmic life events become small, and small things, minor details in the story become massive, big enough to live on the horizon, like someone’s frown become a rainbow. They swell to giant totems of the moment they are a part of, representing them in a way more profound than the thing itself.
And the poems that close out the book, the ‘elegy’ poems, they feel like elegies for life and love itself, all wrapped up in the last heart of a human being. Those final heartbeats like last words that celebrate the whole life it lived, before being lowered down silent, a red box into the earth’s chest.
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