Blood, Tin, Straw : Poems

Rating:
Summary: Life, at its best, is poetry
Review: Sharon is a relative of mine, but before I knew that I knew her poetry. Again and again she has inspired me with the power she puts into her poetry--this collection is purely that, a collection, and claims to be nothing more, which is perhaps the most powerful aspect of her work. I look at my work and hers, and no one could deny that we think on the same wavelength...but yet....there is something unexplainable in her poems that I can never grasp, and that she rules.

Rating:
Summary: not just carbon based
Review: The words of Olds' poems in this book encompass such daring, personal subjects that I was left stunned. Who else but Sharon Olds could make a beautiful poem about watching menstrual blood flow into the toilet by comparing it to ballet dancers? Who else would push the enevelope of public disgust enough to compare vaginal secretion and diamonds? She speaks and glorifies the unmentionable and ugly. In this way, she truly remakes the female body as she writes of it. The experience of reading Olds is not just intellectual; it is a visceral enlightenment.

Rating:
Summary: She Gives Her Soul
Review: to every poem and thus, the reader. Old's newest book of poems has given me the light to transcend the hoi poloi of ordinary verse. Long live a true vates!