Encountering a Poet Series - Many-Angled Poet: The Capacious Imagination of Sharon Olds
John Calderazzo
First thing the next morning, you read it again and see that it has slid down to the realm of the only pretty good. These things happen. But at least you’re convinced that it’s not a genuinely awful poem, as is sometimes the case, in the killer light of the next day. Thus, you are happy enough, and you walk around for a while with that warm buzz of satisfaction and relief (you’re not a fraud, etc.). Also good: the poem explores something important to you that by its nature might well spur a common or universal recognition, which is how your life was transformed during your first real time away from home. Maybe it was a high school trip to Cuba. Or that summer working the oil fields of Wyoming. Or the holiday you lived with your aunt and uncle in New York City. Or your Peace Corps time in Who-Knows-Where-a-Stan.
But, ah, now there’s a problem, though it isn’t all bad. Your poem, you realize, is thinner than it could be, neglecting to explore an entire aspect of your journey. Or maybe it hasn’t evoked the many ways in which that initial transformation continued to change your life and continues still. These are legitimate and ambitious artistic concerns for us all, right?
What to do, then?
Well, you can try to shovel your deeper or additional insights into many places in your still-cooling poem, being careful not to let it bloat beyond recognition. Or add a coda or final stanza that you hope doesn’t dilute the killer ending that still strikes you as not bad at all. Or you can plunge into a brand-new poem. Or two. Or twenty or more.
That’s what Sharon Olds does in Stag’s Leap, her 2013 Pulitzer Prize winning collection that tells a dizzying array of stories of her unexpected (by her) divorce from her husband of thirty years, and its aftermath. She starts with the maddeningly civil moment she finds out: “While he told me, I looked from small thing/to small thing, in our room . . . .”
And then, in poem after poem, she goes---everywhere. One poem explores how they are going to tell the kids. Another how she lets her mother know: “And the moment I told her/she looked at me in shock and dismay./But when will I ever see him again?!” Another: “Once in a while, I gave up, and let myself/remember how much I’d liked the way my ex’s/hips were set . . .”. Others yearn or rage after lost sex, lost trust. The astonishing title poem has her muse: “When anyone escapes, my heart/leaps up. Even when it’s I who am escaped from . . .”
I’m inspired and thrilled by the bravery, compassion, and capaciousness of Sharon Olds’ poetic imagination, the marshaling of her biographical details into lyrical, emotionally compelling art, the many angles or points of view from which she observes important turning points in her life—in Stag’s Leap and in other books, like 2019’s Odes. What can we learn from her to bring to our own work—especially when it becomes obvious that one poem alone on a theme can’t do the job to your satisfaction?
Come join me on Saturday, March 29 at the Loveland Public Library from 12 to 2 for a discussion and appreciation of her work and technique. We will also tackle some prompts to inspire you to explore, one exciting word and image after another, whatever many-angled thing is calling to you.
--John Calderazzo
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But, ah, now there’s a problem, though it isn’t all bad. Your poem, you realize, is thinner than it could be, neglecting to explore an entire aspect of your journey. Or maybe it hasn’t evoked the many ways in which that initial transformation continued to change your life and continues still. These are legitimate and ambitious artistic concerns for us all, right?
What to do, then?
Well, you can try to shovel your deeper or additional insights into many places in your still-cooling poem, being careful not to let it bloat beyond recognition. Or add a coda or final stanza that you hope doesn’t dilute the killer ending that still strikes you as not bad at all. Or you can plunge into a brand-new poem. Or two. Or twenty or more.
That’s what Sharon Olds does in Stag’s Leap, her 2013 Pulitzer Prize winning collection that tells a dizzying array of stories of her unexpected (by her) divorce from her husband of thirty years, and its aftermath. She starts with the maddeningly civil moment she finds out: “While he told me, I looked from small thing/to small thing, in our room . . . .”
And then, in poem after poem, she goes---everywhere. One poem explores how they are going to tell the kids. Another how she lets her mother know: “And the moment I told her/she looked at me in shock and dismay./But when will I ever see him again?!” Another: “Once in a while, I gave up, and let myself/remember how much I’d liked the way my ex’s/hips were set . . .”. Others yearn or rage after lost sex, lost trust. The astonishing title poem has her muse: “When anyone escapes, my heart/leaps up. Even when it’s I who am escaped from . . .”
I’m inspired and thrilled by the bravery, compassion, and capaciousness of Sharon Olds’ poetic imagination, the marshaling of her biographical details into lyrical, emotionally compelling art, the many angles or points of view from which she observes important turning points in her life—in Stag’s Leap and in other books, like 2019’s Odes. What can we learn from her to bring to our own work—especially when it becomes obvious that one poem alone on a theme can’t do the job to your satisfaction?
Come join me on Saturday, March 29 at the Loveland Public Library from 12 to 2 for a discussion and appreciation of her work and technique. We will also tackle some prompts to inspire you to explore, one exciting word and image after another, whatever many-angled thing is calling to you.
--John Calderazzo
Register