Sharon Olds - A Private Poet

'I've tried to make sense of my life ... make a small embodiment of ordinary life, from a daughter's, wife's, mother's point of view'

Sharon Olds is a poet whose work is particularly direct and can be painfully raw at times with its physicality in relationships. Among the plain spoken and direct poets, Olds has become one of my personal favorites. But she has detractors as well. Helen Vendler, a leading American critic of poetry(1) describe her work as self- indulgent, sensationalist, and even pornographic. (2) I take great issue with her assessment.

One thing is indisputable about Olds. For all the exposure of her work; at least ten published collections of poetry, the inclusions in over a hundred anthologies and translation of her work into seven different languages; Olds remains a relatively private person. She has given few interviews over the years and when one takes place, it's newsworthy.

Marianne Macdonald of the Guardian interviewed Sharon Olds for an article that appeared this month in the Guardian and their online version as well. Check it out... it's worth reading.

source (1) (2)

The Invented Person

The poet Stephen Dunn speaks of the invented person in the notebook he keeps, as sited in The Poet's Notebook. Of course fiction writers invent persons all the time but where do people in poems come from?

Dunn's invented person(s) are made up, "from everything I am, or could be. For many years I was more desire than fact. When I stop becoming, that's when I worry."

I recall talking with someone a while back who said they never liked writing poetry in first person. They did not elaborate on why, but I could think of reasons, though they might not be what caused them to dislike first person.

I know all too well that people tend to see first person poems as all about the poet. To some degree that person could reflect certain attributes or desires of the poet, even if not autobiographical. But I think fiction writers have to get inside the heads of their characters too and there is I believe little difference then between the two trades and the nature of the inventiveness necessary to carry off a good piece of writing.

I take it that Dunn's invented person is always changing. Sometimes I find that aspect of the inventiveness the most difficult to control. It is not uncommon for my "first Person" in one poem to seem very much like one in the next. That is a challenge that requires me much more energy as well as courage to free myself from self imposed limits. You can create this shell of a person, but you have to be willing to step into that shell with the persona that is the right fit. If I'm an axe murderer, it's going to take a lot of tweaking of my personality to imagine what that must be like.

Dunn says these people are "borrowed from the real- abstracted... the person we finally know."

*photo credit - FreeFoto.com

WEEK 286 - Unconscious Mutterings

Unconscious Mutterings ~ link
Word & Thought Associations
here's mine:

1. Flicker :: Picker
2. Styling :: Hair
3. Episode :: TV
4. Sexier :: Hot
5. Studious :: Grad
6. Mushroom :: Toad Stool
7. 8 minutes :: Mile
8. Bald :: Shine
9. Immunity :: AT&T
10. Sectioned :: Ortange

Rag Reading Review

Last nights Main Street Rag poetry reading - held at the Writers Place featured Amy Davis ( left) and Missi Rasmussen (right) followed by an open mic.

Amy's poems were an ecliptic journey through some of her earlier work to the present. While some of these poems I've had an opportunity to hear before, there were several I had not. Her delivery was casual and with commentary that included interesting insight into some of the work. Not filler; but things that really enhanced the experience.

Missi's read was smooth and deliberate. Again, some material I was familiar with but lots of poems I had not heard before. There was a great deal of maturity in both the material and the poise with which she delivered it. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of new pieces of work she presented

During the opem mic period - Pat Berge read her poem One Good Day. A moving piece that you could have heard a pen drop as it was read.

Shawn Pavey gets high marks for the selection of these two young women as featured readers for the event. The Main Street Rag is a quarterly literary magazine based in Charlotte, NC and is co-sponsor of the monthly reading series. Pavey is co-founder.

Journal bits this week...

• conversations through cheese cloth/ripple the dialogue
• The last thing echoes its name/off the monument to a culture/unable to establish roots here
• I had a dream in the pitch dark. As disturbing as it was, it remains a shapeless void.
• Rain falling - acoustically pleasing. A single roll of thunder breaks through; then a second one. A lazy Saturday morning has broken out. [7-12]

What the Blogosphere is Saying About The New Poet Laureate

What others are saying about the new poet laureate - Kay Ryan...

• The New Modernest - Edward Lifson.com / "Me, I'm a minimalist. I like lots of it. That's a joke. But I've always liked the spare poetry of Kay Ryan."
• Bibliolatry / "Ever the modern gal, I like that her poems are short and deceptively easy to read."
• Books, Inq.: The Epilogue / "She's a hell of a poet, and a great person to boot."
• Little Fury / "Kay Ryan’s appointment to the post has potential, people, so I’m hopeful. By her own admission, Ryan is “an outsider,” though I suppose I dare you to name a poet who doesn't believe he or she is, in some fundamental human way, an outsider. Dana Gioia, maybe. Billy Collins. Yeah, ok, so give me a list of ten. At the very least, I find Ryan’s work to be magnificently energetic. "
• Notes on the Writing Life / "Ryan is skillful, accomplished, and more than deserving of this honor, but I don't much care for her poetry, which tends to be simple, spare, and playful. Just a matter of taste, really. Simic is a hard act to follow and is a personal favorite. I'm happy to see a woman have the honor again after so long a string of men, but I had hoped to see Jorie Graham named. Like Billy Collins and Ted Kooser, Kay Ryan writes poetry that is very accessible. Even a caveman could read it. Sometimes that simplicity appeals to people who don't read more complex or surreal poetry, so perhaps Ryan will draw a wider audience. And that will surely be a good thing for poetry."

Well, I was Surprised

Kay Ryan would not have been on my short list. Hell, she would not have even made my long list. I'm not referring to prospective Veeps, I'm talking about the next U.S. Poet Laureate. This is not to be critical of Kay Ryan, it has to do with the fact that she is a poet who has been completely off my radar. As such, I am quite frankly at a loss to assess my view of the news of her selection other than to express some feeling of relief that a woman was selected as it has been quite a drought for their gender.





What I do know about Kay is the following:

• She was born in California
• Educated at UCLA - both bachelor's and master's degree
• She's received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, Guggenheim fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Union League Poetry Prize, the Maurice English Poetry Award, and three Pushcart Prizes.
• She has published six collections of poetry.

Others on Kay Ryan:

Dana Gioia: "Ryan’s poems characteristically take the shape of an observation or idea in the process of clarifying itself. Although the poems are brightly sensual and imagistic, there is often a strongly didactic sense at work."

J.D. McClatchy: "She is an anomaly in today's literary culture: as intense and elliptical as Dickinson, as buoyant and rueful as Frost.”

In the days ahead I'll be checking out her work and will likely be able to formulate a better view of this latest selection by the Library of Congress.