The Unswept Room [Paperback]

Sharon Olds (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 24, 2002

From Sharon Olds—a stunning new collection of poems that project a fresh spirit, a startling energy of language and counterpoint, and a moving, elegiac tone shot through with humor.

From poems that erupt out of history and childhood to those that embody the nurturing of a new generation of children and the transformative power of marital love, Sharon Olds takes risks, writing boldly of physical, emotional, and spiritual sensations that are seldom the stuff of poetry.

These are poems that strike for the heart, as Sharon Olds captures our imagination with unexpected wordplay, sprung rhythms, and the disquieting revelations of ordinary life. Writing at the peak of her powers, this greatly admired poet gives us her finest collection.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From her debut Satan Says (1980) through Blood, Tin, Straw (1999), Olds has tackled child sexual abuse and grownup women's sexuality on a post-Freudian (some said post-feminist) canvas of love, hate, revenge. This seventh volume of verse offers Olds's regulars all they have come to expect: "blood skin and tongue," "glass, bone metal, flesh, and the family." Olds describes "the day my folks/ sashed me to a chair"; the day her speaker "slowly cut off [her] eyelashes"; her desire "to work off/ my father's and my sins"; a father's cross-dressing; the Virgin Mary's vulva ("the beauty of her lily"); birth-control practices and pro-choice politics; menopause (at 491/2); and memories of parturition: "there came that faint, almost sexual wail, and her/ whole body flushed rose." All these moments appear, as usual, in confidently effective free verse that leaves no reader behind. Olds's followers may be delighted, or simply surprised, as they find, midway through the volume, an increasing focus on happiness: poems such as "The Hour After" and "If, Someday" portray the great sex and the commitment the speaker shares with her male partner: "I love/ to not know/ what is my beloved/ and what is I." Another group of moving poems consider her pleasures as an empty-nest parent, sharing space or conversation with "nearly-grown children." Olds has never been thought technically innovative, and this collection will not convert detractors. It will, however, offer her many fans new work to chew on, presented with her usual intense honesty, along with "some fancies of crumbs/ from under love's table."
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Olds returns here with a stronger, cleaner effort than she offered in her last collection, Blood, Tin, Straw. With the upheaval in her personal life somewhat sorted out, she now strives to clean out her proverbial closet, perhaps completing the chore suggested in the title. Organized like her previous works, this work begins with poems about her early life and then moves on to grade school, her marriage, and up to the present day. Throughout, Olds re-creates her life, building a scrapbook through words. Although many of her subjects (family, love, sex) stay the same, her tone has shifted from an angry questioning of fate to a passionate acceptance of her own mortality and the experiences she has had. Yet she also offers a darker world, previously hinted at in poems about her parents and more fully explored in her last work. Here she refines the effect, noting in the opening piece: "But I know/ that the dead, at the moment of death, do not go/ somewhere else, as if on vacation/ showing up in bathing suits,/ unwounded." Even as she strives for an understanding that has of yet alluded her, Olds seems to have found some peace as she ages: "The older I get, the more I feel/ almost beautiful." The same can be said for her words.
Rachel Collins, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (September 24, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375709983
• ISBN-13: 978-0375709982
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.4 x 8.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #218,427 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I've seen her read..., December 1, 2003

By 

"alimarben" (Oklahoma City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Unswept Room (Paperback)

Despite some readership's lack of comprehension for the genuis that is Sharon Olds, I am a believer in her as art and artist. I've seen her read (at Oklahoma State University) and was held in awe by her delivery and the new poems she read to the audience. I respect her as a poet, a woman, an artist, an honest voice to depict real-life horror. Poetry is not an artifact for a reader to condemn (or praise too highly). Just observe, open yourself to the experience, and be contently uncomfortably (or uncomfortably content) in the reactions churning within yourself.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Olds is at the top of her form., October 22, 2002

By 

Jessica (Brooklyn NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Unswept Room (Paperback)

Strong, beautiful and breathtaking.

I didn't think Olds' work could get any stronger, but it does. Her sense of meter and her willingness to take the reader on a real leap of mind and heart are even more developed here than in her earlier work. A must-read for any poet or anyone who likes poetry.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Glimpse Over The Wall, November 25, 2005

By 

Lee Fredrickson (Hansville, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Unswept Room (Paperback)

I'm a guy, 62 years old, day job
as a herder-of-diesel mechanics
in a small shipyard. Voracious appetite
for poetry for the most recent few
years of my life.

Along now comes "The Unswept Room."

The cover art is worth the price
of the book. Inside is a voyage
that defines travel at it's apex.

I'm captured from the beginning with
Olds' fluidity, warmth, and, excuse the use
of a well-worn word in re: poetry,
her clarity.

It's not easy to penetrate the soul
of a man used for years to the
bending of wrenches.
The body of work in this book
set me up for just such a piercing.
Then early this morning, I got to
"April, New Hampshire."
Brought the salty fluid to bathe
my eyes, but none fell out.
A few pages on, "The Learner"
nailed me to wall.

I thought "The Red Queen" had taught
me more than one gender should know
about the other, from a scientific
line of sight.
Ms. Olds has taken this salty old codger
staightaway into her soul, her feminine soul.
I will be forever grateful.

Ladies--You may have kindred candles lit for you.
Gentlemen--You may learn from the light
of those candles.

Lee