Satan Says (Pitt Poetry Series) [Hardcover]

Sharon Olds (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Commenting on Sharon Olds' debut, Linda Pastan wrote that Olds was "clearly a poet to be reckoned with." No kidding. Olds has gone on to create an impressively bold body of work. Notice here "The Language of the Brag," in which Olds describes the heroic deed of childbirth: "I have done what you wanted to do Walt Whitman/ . . . this glistening verb,/and I am putting my proud American boast/ right here with the others." Amen. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"In Satan Says, Sharon Olds convincingly, and with astonishing vigor, presents a world which, if not always hostile, is never clear about which face , it will show her." -- American Book Review

Airport Hotel
Barometer
Coming Home After Vacation
Drowning
Encounter
Feared Drowned
First Night
Fish Story
Fishing Off Nova Scotia
Five-year-old-boy
Geography
The Housewives Watching Morning Tv
I Am The Shrink's Wife
I Could Not Tell
Indictment Of Senior Officers
The Indispensibility Of The Eyes
Infinite Bliss
The Language Of The Brag
Late
Love Between Us
Love Fossil
The Love Object
Monarchs
The Mother
Night Terrors
Nurse Whitman
The Opening
The Other Life
Photographs Courtesy Of The Fall River Historical Society
Pilgrimage
Portrait Of A Daughter
The Possessive
Prayer
Primitive
Quake Theory
Reading You
Republican Living Rooms
The Rising Daughter
Satan Says
Seventh Birthday Of The First Child
The Sisters Of Sexual Treasure
Solitary
Station
Sunday Night In The City
The Talk
That Year
Time-travel
To A Poet
Tricks
The Unborn
The Unjustly Punished Child
Young Mothers (1)
Young Mothers (2)
Young Mothers (4)
Young Mothers (5)
Copyright© 1998 Roth Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved -- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Product Details

• Hardcover: 72 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Pittsburgh Pr (Txt); First edition. edition (June 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822934132
• ISBN-13: 978-0822934134
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,129,873 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A poet of shocking and beautiful honesty, June 21, 2001

By 

Michael Meyerhofer (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Satan Says (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

"Satan Says" is the first collection of Olds' poetry which I have read (although I've come across her poems once or twice in anthologies). I found the poems in "Satan Says" to be not only startling and brutally honest, but beautifully crafted as well. Her work reminded me greatly of Marie Howe, another female poet writing on (among other things) the body's oft-ignored sensuality even in the face of an abusive world (or family). Her poems seem to fuse the simple craftsmanship and observational talents of haiku with the frankness of Anne Sexton, giving us a treatise as much related to the body, childbirth, sexuality, dying, and aggression as to metaphysics. Genuine and powerful, highly recommended!

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review of Satan Says by Sharon Olds, January 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Satan Says (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

This is a brilliant, sad and utterly endearing first collection of poetry by one of North America's most amazing and blistering narrative poets. Michael Ondaatje says, "Sharon Olds's poems are pure fire in the hands--risky, on the verge of falling, and in the end leaping up. I love the roughness and humor and brag and tenderness and completion in her work as she carries the reader through rooms of passion and loss." --look also at Gary Short's "Flying Over Sonny Liston"--wonderful boyhood poems set against a flat Nevada landscape--

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Beginning, August 7, 2000

By 

Homer (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Satan Says (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

This collection handles even the most disturbing personal matters in ways which are both accessible and enlightening to the reader. As human and inspired as her later books.