Satan Says

To be fair, I am not a big fan of poetry in general. That said, Sharon Olds has a beautiful way of handling the English Language. Her work always sounds good. You want to read it aloud. Her poetry is often has a dark and has an unpleasant sexuality to it, reflecting (I assume) some bad sexual history in her own life. When it comes to these poems, I feel uncomfortably voyeuristic, reading something personal that I shouldn't know.

Olds first collection involves an interplay between the particular experiences of the speaker's experience as a daughter, woman, and mother, and a larger symbolic exploration of masculinity and femininity. There's such violence at every turn, the poems largely seem to be sidling close to obliteration and ruin.

I love this book. Someone gave it to me when I was a freshman in college and first allowing my own poetry to be seen by human eyes. This collection rocked my world and opened my eyes to a whole new world of understanding.