Stag’s Leap, a 2012 poetry collection by Sharon Olds, catalogs the dissolution of the speaker’s marriage following her husband’s infidelity. Confessional and intimate, both erudite and darkly humorous, the collection transgresses boundaries between the poet and speaker (also named Sharon) as it archives processes of trauma and loss, decay and revitalization. Framed by seasonal sections, (“January-December” to “Years Later,”) Stag’s Leap maps the temporal and spatial dimensions of memory and investigates the fallibility of representation.
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
Sharon Olds