Elementary Secondary Higher Ed Common Reads
0 0
Download high-resolution image

Blood, Tin, Straw

Poems

Author Sharon Olds
Ebook
Knopf
On sale Dec 05, 2012 | 144 Pages | 9780307554758
Add to cart Add to list Exam Copies

See Additional Formats
WINNER OF THE PATERSON POETRY PRIZE • A transcendent collection of poems about the ecstatic and brutal side of a woman’s experience—from the Pulitzer Prize and T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry winner, called "a poet for these times, a powerful woman who won’t back down" (San Francisco Chronicle).

"She has written without embarrassment or apology, with remarkable passion and savagery and nerve, poems about family and family pathology, early erotic fascination, and sexual life inside marriage."—Amy Hempel

Sharon Olds divides this new book into five sections—"Blood," "Tin," "Straw," "Fire," and "Light"—each made up of fourteen poems whose dominant imagery is drawn from one of these elements. The poems are rooted in different moments of an ordinary life and weave back and forth in time. Each section suggests the progression of the making of a soul cleansed by blood, forged by fire, suffused by light. Sharon Olds transforms her subjects with an alchemist's art, using language that is alternately casual and startling, fierce and transcendent.

This is an intensely moving collection by one of our finest poets.
The Necklace



At the worst of the depression, one moment in the office,
suddenly, my necklace shifted,
flowed across some high ribs
and sank down along the top of one breast
as if a creature had got into my shirt,
yet I felt its will-lessness, caress
of matter only, small whipper or
snapper, milk or garter, just
the vertebrae now, as if a stripped
spine had taken its coccyx in its jaw
around my throat -- s equator, and now
stirred on the mortal plates.  And these were
the pearls from my mother, as if she slithered
along me to say, Come away from your gloom,
your father, that garden is a grave, come away,
come away -- as if some crumbs of her milquetoast,
aged and polished to a gem hardness,
spoke in oyster Braille on my chest
near my own breast, suckler singing
to suckler, anti-Circe my mother
led me away from that trough with a light
raking, over me, of her wiggly whip -- just one
wobble along me, globe on her axis,
chariot-wheel of morning.
Copyright © 1999 by Sharon Olds. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
© Hillery Stone
SHARON OLDS was born in San Francisco and educated at Stanford University and Columbia University. She is the recipient of the Frost Medal for lifetime achievement, as well as the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the UK’s T. S. Eliot Prize for her 2012 collection, Stag’s Leap. She is the author of twelve previous books of poetry and the recipient of many other awards and honors, including the inaugural San Francisco Poetry Center Award for her first book, Satan Says (1980), and the National Book Critics Circle Award for her second, The Dead and the Living, which was also the Lamont Poetry Selection for 1983. Olds teaches in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University and helped found the NYU outreach programs, among them the writing workshop for residents of the former S. S. Goldwater Memorial Hospital on Roosevelt Island, and for the veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. She lives in New York City. View titles by Sharon Olds

About

WINNER OF THE PATERSON POETRY PRIZE • A transcendent collection of poems about the ecstatic and brutal side of a woman’s experience—from the Pulitzer Prize and T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry winner, called "a poet for these times, a powerful woman who won’t back down" (San Francisco Chronicle).

"She has written without embarrassment or apology, with remarkable passion and savagery and nerve, poems about family and family pathology, early erotic fascination, and sexual life inside marriage."—Amy Hempel

Sharon Olds divides this new book into five sections—"Blood," "Tin," "Straw," "Fire," and "Light"—each made up of fourteen poems whose dominant imagery is drawn from one of these elements. The poems are rooted in different moments of an ordinary life and weave back and forth in time. Each section suggests the progression of the making of a soul cleansed by blood, forged by fire, suffused by light. Sharon Olds transforms her subjects with an alchemist's art, using language that is alternately casual and startling, fierce and transcendent.

This is an intensely moving collection by one of our finest poets.

Excerpt

The Necklace



At the worst of the depression, one moment in the office,
suddenly, my necklace shifted,
flowed across some high ribs
and sank down along the top of one breast
as if a creature had got into my shirt,
yet I felt its will-lessness, caress
of matter only, small whipper or
snapper, milk or garter, just
the vertebrae now, as if a stripped
spine had taken its coccyx in its jaw
around my throat -- s equator, and now
stirred on the mortal plates.  And these were
the pearls from my mother, as if she slithered
along me to say, Come away from your gloom,
your father, that garden is a grave, come away,
come away -- as if some crumbs of her milquetoast,
aged and polished to a gem hardness,
spoke in oyster Braille on my chest
near my own breast, suckler singing
to suckler, anti-Circe my mother
led me away from that trough with a light
raking, over me, of her wiggly whip -- just one
wobble along me, globe on her axis,
chariot-wheel of morning.
Copyright © 1999 by Sharon Olds. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Author

© Hillery Stone
SHARON OLDS was born in San Francisco and educated at Stanford University and Columbia University. She is the recipient of the Frost Medal for lifetime achievement, as well as the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the UK’s T. S. Eliot Prize for her 2012 collection, Stag’s Leap. She is the author of twelve previous books of poetry and the recipient of many other awards and honors, including the inaugural San Francisco Poetry Center Award for her first book, Satan Says (1980), and the National Book Critics Circle Award for her second, The Dead and the Living, which was also the Lamont Poetry Selection for 1983. Olds teaches in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University and helped found the NYU outreach programs, among them the writing workshop for residents of the former S. S. Goldwater Memorial Hospital on Roosevelt Island, and for the veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. She lives in New York City. View titles by Sharon Olds

Additional formats

Other Books by this Author

Related Articles

Books for National Depression Education and Awareness Month
Psychology

Books for National Depression Education and Awareness Month

For National Depression Education and Awareness Month in October, we are sharing a collection of titles that educates and informs on depression, including personal stories from those who have experienced depression and topics that range from causes and symptoms of depression to how to develop coping mechanisms to battle depression.

Read more

Books for National Depression Education and Awareness Month

Psychology
Literature

Horror Titles for the Halloween Season

In celebration of the Halloween season, we are sharing horror books that are aligned with the themes of the holiday: the sometimes unknown and scary creatures and witches. From classic ghost stories and popular novels that are celebrated today, in literature courses and beyond, to contemporary stories about the monsters that hide in the dark, our list

Read more

Horror Titles for the Halloween Season

Literature
History Gender and Sexuality Studies

Books for LGBTQIA+ History Month

For LGBTQIA+ History Month in October, we’re celebrating the shared history of individuals within the community and the importance of the activists who have fought for their rights and the rights of others. We acknowledge the varying and diverse experiences within the LGBTQIA+ community that have shaped history and have led the way for those

Read more

Books for LGBTQIA+ History Month

History Gender and Sexuality Studies
Subscribe

Penguin Random House Higher Education

© 2025 Penguin Random House

Back to Top
0
    • 0
    Wish List (0)