- Paperback: 112 pages
- Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (Jan 30 1996)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0679765603
- ISBN-13: 978-0679765608
- Product Dimensions: 14.8 x 0.9 x 21.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 159 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #805,584 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
The theme of Sharon Olds' fifth volume of poetry, The Wellspring is family and the sexual and sensual nature of the creation and sustenance of life--most often her own. From a time in her mother's life that preceded her own birth ("half of me/was deep in her body, dyed egg") to her father's testicles ("my brothers/and sisters are there, swimming by the cinerous/millions") to her son (who "waited inside me so many years/egg in my side before I was born"), her place in the reproductive life of her family is paramount. Even when the ostensible subject of a poem is as public as a campus antiwar demonstration, as in "May 1968," the real topic is creation and procreation: "The mounted police moved, near us/while we sang ... /if my period did not come tonight/I was pregnant."
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
The subjects covered in Olds's (The Father) new collection will be familiar to readers, as will be her uncompromising insights and the beauty of her verse. The poems of Part I address the poet's childhood and her uneasy relationship with her parents, subjects about which she continues to display the bittersweet lyricism at which she excels: "...sometimes I thought she could/ sense bits of herself in my body/ like dots of undissolved sugar/ in a recipe that did not quite work out." Part II, concerned primarily with adolescence and awakening sexuality, offers perhaps the strongest grouping as Olds explores sexuality in an "endless... apprenticeship to the mortal." Least effective are the poems that follow, mainly about her children and her motherhood, where even Olds's powers of microscopic observation-of both self and other-do not always lift this material out of the mundane. The last poems celebrate love in marriage, portraying the maturing of erotic and emotional bonds over time ("love is simply our element,/ it is the summer night, we are in it.") While one might wish to see Olds taking more chances and expanding her subject matter, she does not fail to awaken us to the depth and beauty of familiar concerns.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Wellspring well done,
By Jex Weisman (Tallahassee, FL, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Wellspring: Poems (Paperback)
I enjoyed this book for several reasons - Olds' poetry is brilliant without being haughty or laiden with archaic vocabulary or tired style. Her straightforward honesty coupled with her conciseness makes her poetry easy to read. Such honesty and conciseness are easy to "overdo" or do wrong. Olds avoids both such mistakes. She is honest without being brutal or giving the reader a sense that they are recieving too much information and she is concise without being too brief and leaving the reading wanting more. Her style tells the reader exactly what she means to say and leaves us feeling as if we have recieved the perfect dose of poetry.
5.0 out of 5 stars
The most honest poet alive.,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Wellspring: Poems (Paperback)
This is the most straightforward, urgent, honest poetry I have ever read. Not for fans of pretentious flowery language, for the squeamish, or for simpletons who don't see that there is beauty in complexity. I have yet to find another poet who can write with the clarity of Sharon Olds.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Its a shame trees died to make this book.,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Wellspring: Poems (Paperback)
Sharon Olds has diarrhea of the pen.
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