SHARON OLDS, 2013 PULITZER PRIZE WINNER, WEAVES TIME INTO MEMORY WREATHS

Sharon Olds, one of the most lyrically intense writers of contemporary poetry, has won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for her book of poems Stag’s Leap (Knopf, 112 pages, Sept. 12, 2012). She tells of domestic life in stories that weave in and out of time frames. The recent book is about the course of a divorce. Previous books are about her birth family and children as well as her former husband.

The poem “I Go Back to May 1937,” about Olds’s parents,  (The Gold Cell, 1987), begins within a photograph’s edges in a well lit pose:

"I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody. . . ."

 

This view of her parents, before her conception, presents frozen portraits of two young people with an unformed future ahead of them. The “wrought-iron gate” is still ajar, although its presence makes it clear that confinement is pending; this is another frame in the photograph. Its “sword-tips” are ominous. The young man and woman, before parenthood, are tabula rasa, without knowledge of the oncoming pain. The poet enters into the photograph with them, with awareness of their future, and completes their story before it begins. Future and past collapse together, and the narrator creates a present moment:

" . . . .  I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it. "

 

She erases time sequence and creates a present moment in which volition is possible. Her resolution is articulation—a great trust in the invisible readers outside the frame of the poem. Her poems create memory wreaths, like the floral arrangements woven from family members' lockets of hair. She takes the past and creates mementos of the present.

 Her prize-winning book Stag’s Leap continues to narrate personal relationships. Publishers Weekly begins its review: “Known for her unadorned, emotionally direct, sometimes sexually explicit free verse, Olds has amassed a large and loyal following over 30-odd years and 10 books. In her new collection every poem speaks to the collapse of a 30-year marriage, precipitated by the ex-husband’s affair. Hence the memorable title: “The drawing on the label of our favorite red wine/ looks like my husband, casting himself off a/ cliff in his fervor to get free of me” (17 Sept. 2012).

 Carol Duffy, poet laureate of the United Kingdom, writes of Stag’s Leap: “There is a grace and chivalry in her grief that marks her out as being a world-class poet. I always say that poetry is the music of being human, and in this book she is really singing. Her journey from grief to healing is so beautifully executed.” Stag’s Leap also won the T.S. Eliot prize. There is a grace and chivalry in her grief that marks her out as being a world-class poet. I always say that poetry is the music of being human, and in this book she is really singing. Her journey from grief to healing is so beautifully executed.”There is a grace and chivalry in her grief that marks her out as being a world-class poet. I always say that poetry is the music of being human, and in this book she is really singing. Her journey from grief to healing is so beautifully executed.”There is a grace and chivalry in her grief that marks her out as being a world-class poet. I always say that poetry is the music of being human, and in this book she is really singing. Her journey from grief to healing is so beautifully executed.”

 

Bio: SHARON OLDS was born in San Francisco and educated at Stanford and Columbia universities. Her first book, Satan Says (1980), received the inaugural San Francisco Poetry Center Award. Her second, The Dead and the Living, was both the Lamont Poetry Selection for 1983 and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Father was short-listed for the T. S. Eliot Prize in England, and The Unswept Room was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Olds teaches in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University and is one of the founders of NYU's writing workshops for residents of Goldwater Hospital, and for veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Academy of American Poets page: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/205

Amazon.com has a selection of poems from Stag’s Leap: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0375712259

Poetry Foundation link: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/sharon-olds