Customer Reviews

The Unswept Room

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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

I applaud Sharon Olds for not bowing to the literati's mandate that all poetry must rhyme, be a sonnet, a villanelle, pantoum. This is free verse at its finest. It may not subscribe to a "type" but it is lyrical and poetic just the same. Poetry is evolving and many of today's writers are moving away from the strict rhyme and meter. The poetry in The Unswept Room is some of Olds' finest work. After the brilliant and harrowing poetry about her abuse as a child, this volume finds a more settled Olds starting a new chapter in her life. Bravo.

I first encountered Sharon Olds as I was going through The New Yorker and came upon her poem, "The Father." I was hooked and taught it and other of her works to my A.P. English classes from that day on. Readable, teachable, reachable, explorable...wonderful. Ms. Olds is, along with Joe Pintauro, the modern poet to whom I keep returning. Cannot recommend her work highly enough. Brilliant.

Sharon Olds' "The Unswept Room" is a 2002 National Book Award Finalist for Poetry. That alone makes the book worth paying attention to.
The National Book Foundation wrote "A new collection of poems from a distinguished poet, ranging from those erupting out of history and childhood, a new generation of children, the transformative power of marital love, and the shock when that love comes to an end."
If you enjoyed her previous poems, you will like this one too.

Sharon Olds does not disappoint. This is my new favorite book!

Olds could be writing short prose pieces and make it pass for a short novel. These "poems" don't even really pass for "psalms", which I suspect her to be moving towards. Interesting contents but I believe she needs to stop writing for writing's sake.

This is not poetry! It is the rantings of a woman obsessed with herself and her anguish. I don't care.

Her verse is sexually explicit and offensive, in particular the poem titled "Sunday Night" in which she recounts the improper, what could even be considered the criminal behavior of her father towards the waitresses at the restaurants her family would frequent. What is worse, when this poem was written and published, her father was deceased, and unable to answer to these statements. I wonder if these behaviors actually took place, and, it not, why would the poet sully the name of her dead father? Also, what impact did this poem have on her mother? Perhaps Ms. Olds can write a poem to address these issues.

I cannot recommend this dreadful "poetry" to anyone.

Sincerely,

Catherine Ross

This is not poetry, it is prose. Or if it is not, then what, I wonder, is prose? Read an excerpt aloud and see for yourself.