Sharon Olds Summary

Sharon Olds has established herself as a major American poet whose themes of sexuality and power as daughter, wife, and mother are of particular importance to women. Besides depicting family life, she... Read more

In the following excerpt, Murray discusses Olds's passionate treatment of such subjects as pain, love, and anger in Satan Says. If there were a physics of suffering, some way to graph the pa... Read more

Glück is an American poet, critic, and educator. In the following excerpt, she faults the poems in The Father for being repetitive. Sharon Olds is a poet of considerable achievement and a wh... Read more

In the following review, Stenstrom favorably assesses The Wellspring. In this her fifth collection [The Wellspring], awardwinning Olds surveys her life from conception to middle age with the laserl... Read more

McDiarmid is an American educator and editor. In the following review of The Wellspring, she discusses Olds's celebration of the body. If the body electric that Whitman sang were set in one ... Read more

Schweizer is an educator and critic. In the following essay, he discusses the therapeutic aspects of the poems in The Father, concluding that the volume "is a book in search of a catharsis and ... Read more

Wright is an American poet whose work has won numerous awards. In the following review of The Dead and the Living, she praises Olds's use of unadorned, concrete description to evoke sympathy an... Read more

In the following excerpt, Moyer discusses Olds's incorporation of personal pain and tragedy into her poetry. "We crave getting into each other's pain," Sharon Olds said ... Read more

In the following review, Wills praises Olds's unsentimental and honest depiction of emotionally laden topics and social taboos in The Father. Some years ago, Sharon Olds's father died... Read more

Critical Essay by Rochelle Ratner [Satan Says is] an emotionally young book; hate and love of parents, woman suddenly out on her own, the frightened wife and mother. Olds's experience can easi... Read more

Critical Essay by Lisel Mueller Sharon Olds's first book [Satan Says], which is uncompromisingly autobiographical, is divided into sections titled for the roles in which she experiences hersel... Read more

Critical Essay by Publishers Weekly The deeply felt cycle of poems [in The Dead and the Living] concerns the universal experiences of death, both public and private, and life…. From executions... Read more

Critical Essay by Elizabeth Gaffney [The Dead and the Living] explores the bonds of love and terror that hold a family together. This beautifully structured collection, the Lamont poetry selection fo... Read more

Pybus is an English editor, educator, and poet. In the excerpt below, he praises Olds's focus on physicality, autobiography, and parent-child relationships in The Matter of This World. The A... Read more

Lesser is an American poet, translator, critic, and educator. In the following review of The Father, she examines the volume's autobiographical focus. Through four volumes of poetry—S... Read more

Keelan is an editor and poet. In the following excerpt, she offers a favorable assessment of The Father. Though I have attempted to discard much of the dogma of my childhood Catholicism, I have nev... Read more

Wright is an American poet, critic, and educator. In the following review of The Dead and the Living, she praises Olds's use of unadorned, concrete description to evoke sympathy and love in sce... Read more

Libby is an American educator and critic. In the following excerpt, taken from a mixed review of The Gold Cell, he asserts that Olds's poems are hampered by a preoccupation with morbidity, phys... Read more

Hudgins is an American poet, short story writer, critic, and educator. In the following excerpt, he offers a mixed assessment of Olds's The Gold Cell, admiring its powerful imagery and narrativ... Read more

Wakoski is an American poet, essayist, critic, and educator. In the following excerpt, she remarks that Olds's poems exhibit a fascination with destruction, suffering, and bestiality. Readin... Read more