Product Description
Odes
Author: Sharon Olds
Format: Paperback
'Interspersed with acts of breathtaking linguistic daring.' — Charlotte Mendelson, Observer Book of the Year
Opening with a powerful and tender 'Ode to the Hymen', Sharon Olds uses this age-old poetic form to address many aspects of herself, in a collection that is centred around the female body and female pleasures, and touches along the way on parts of her own story which will be familiar from earlier works, each episode and memory now burnished by the wisdom and grace of looking back.
In such poems as 'Ode to My Sister', 'Ode of Broken Loyalty', 'Ode to My Whiteness', 'Blow Job Ode', 'Ode to the Last 38 Trees in New York City Visible from This Window', Olds treats us to an intimate self-examination that, like all her work, is universal and by turns searing and charming in its honesty.
From the early bodily joys and sorrows of her girlhood to the recent deaths of those dearest to her - the 'Sheffield Mountain Ode' for Galway Kinnell is one of the most stunning pieces here - Olds shapes her world in language that is startlingly fresh, profound in its conclusions, and life-giving for the reader.
About the Author
Sharon Olds was born in San Francisco and educated at Stanford University and Columbia University. The winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize for her 2012 collection, Stag's Leap, she is the author of twelve previous books of poetry and the winner of many other awards and honours. Olds teaches in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University and helped to found the NYU outreach programs, among them the writing workshop for residents of Isidor Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island, and for the veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. She lives in New York City.
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