Satan Says (Pitt Poetry Series) [Paperback]

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.

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

Product Details

• Paperback: 72 pages
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press (June 30, 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822953145
• ISBN-13: 978-0822953142
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #261,757 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

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.