Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002
by Sharon Olds
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Book Summary Information
Author: Sharon OldsEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-09-28
ISBN: 0375710760
Number of pages: 208
Publisher: Knopf
Book Reviews of Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002
Book Review: The most accessible -- and thrilling -- poet now writing
Summary: 5 Stars
Her father is dying, and her plane's been cancelled, but there's another, leaving in just a few minutes, not in this terminal, but it will get her to her father before he dies, and so Sharon Olds runs --- I swear to you, she runs as no woman has ever run before.
She's making love. Though it looks like she's having sex, because the writing is so specific. But as much as Sharon Olds revels when he does [redacted] to her and she [redacted], she's clear what's really going on. ("How do they do it, the ones who make love without love?" she wonders.) And so, after, she knows what women know after.
Her son, he's so big now. And her daughter --- brushing her hair, Sharon Olds can't help thinking: What does it all mean?
Parents, lovers/husbands, children. Sharon Olds deals mostly --- I could almost say: deals only --- with the big topics. At least, the big topics if you have parents, husbands/lovers and kids. And she deals with them so directly, so bluntly, that it may come as a surprise to those who do not know her writing that she is a poet, and, for my money, the best we have.
The subject of a lot of poetry is poetry: the poem taking its place --- or wanting to --- in the great chain of literature. Sharon Olds has done her reading. And she has her influences. But the beauty of her writing is that you see none of that. All you get is a woman, looking and listening, and then talking. "Do what you are going to do, and I will tell you about it," she writes at the end of a poem about her parents, and that's the strength of her work --- it's just the facts she thinks you need, plus her take on them.
Sharon Olds can go this deep because she lives this deep. She does not read newspapers or watch TV. "The amount of horror one used to hear about in one village could be quite extreme," she explains. "But one might not have heard about all the other villages' horrors at the same time." Also, she doesn't drink coffee or smoke, and she limits her wine. Her life is marriage, kids, work. Which, she says, accounts for accessibility of her poems:
"I think that my work is easy to understand because I am not a thinker. How can I put it? I write the way I perceive, I guess. It's not really simple, I don't think, but it's about ordinary things -- feeling about things, about people. I'm not an intellectual, I'm not an abstract thinker. And I'm interested in ordinary life. So I think that our writing reflects us."
"Strike Sparks" is a selection of her poems from 1980 to 2002. It tells a story, though that wasn't her intent along the way. ("I'm just interested in human stuff like hate, love, sexual love and sex. I don't see why not.") In these poems, we follow the dying of a father, the growth of children, the deepening of love through sex. And more. Because Sharon Olds mostly does what the greatest poets do: She knows what you feel, but can't find the words to say.
Summary of Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002
A powerful collection from one of our most gifted and widely read poets?117 of her finest poems drawn from her seven published volumes.Michael Ondaatje has called Sharon Olds?s poetry ?pure fire in the hands? and cheered the ?roughness and humor and brag and tenderness and completion in her work as she carries the reader through rooms of passion and loss.? This rich selection exhibits those qualities in poem after poem, reflecting, moreover, an exciting experimentation with rhythm and language and a movement toward an embrace beyond the personal. Subjects are revisited?the pain of childhood, adolescent sexual stirrings, the fulfillment of marriage, the wonder of children?but each recasting penetrates ever more deeply, enriched by new perceptions and conceits.
Strike Sparks is a testament to this remarkable poet?s continuing and amazing growth.
From the Hardcover edition.
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