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Sharon Olds
Sharon Olds is the author of numerous volumes of poetry, including Blood, Tin, Straw (1999), The Wellspring (1996), and The Gold Cell (1987). It has been said of her work that "she uses raw language and startling images to convey truths about domestic and political violence, sexuality, family relationships, and the body." The reviewer for the New York Times hailed Olds's poetry for its vision: "Like Whitman, Ms. Olds sings the body in celebration of a power stronger than political oppression."
Olds's second volume of poetry, The Dead and the Living (1984), won the Lamont Poetry Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Critics praised these poems for their power and their language as they unflinchingly explore sexual abuse and link it with overt political oppression. A reviewer for the Iowa Review wrote: "What makes these poems gripping is not only their humanity, the recognizable and plausibly complex rendering of character and representative episode, but their language—direct, down to earth, immersed in the essential implements and processes of daily living . . ."
Olds is a native Californian who earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University. She is a founding chair of the writing program at Goldwater Hospital for the severely physically disabled. Olds chairs New York University's Creative Writing Program. |
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