The Wellspring: Poems [Paperback]

Sharon Olds (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 30, 1996

Sharon Olds's dazzling new collection is a sequence of poems that reaches into the very wellspring of life. The poems take us back to the womb, and from there on to childhood, to a searing sexual awakening, to the shock of childbirth, to the wonder and humor of parenthood--and, finally, to the depths of adult love.

Always bold, musical, honest, these poems plunge us into the essence of experience. This is a highly charged, beautifully organized collection from one of the finest poets writing today.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The theme of Sharon Olds' fifth volume of poetry, The Wellspring is family and the sexual and sensual nature of the creation and sustenance of life--most often her own. From a time in her mother's life that preceded her own birth ("half of me/was deep in her body, dyed egg") to her father's testicles ("my brothers/and sisters are there, swimming by the cinerous/millions") to her son (who "waited inside me so many years/egg in my side before I was born"), her place in the reproductive life of her family is paramount. Even when the ostensible subject of a poem is as public as a campus antiwar demonstration, as in "May 1968," the real topic is creation and procreation: "The mounted police moved, near us/while we sang ... /if my period did not come tonight/I was pregnant." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The subjects covered in Olds's (The Father) new collection will be familiar to readers, as will be her uncompromising insights and the beauty of her verse. The poems of Part I address the poet's childhood and her uneasy relationship with her parents, subjects about which she continues to display the bittersweet lyricism at which she excels: "...sometimes I thought she could/ sense bits of herself in my body/ like dots of undissolved sugar/ in a recipe that did not quite work out." Part II, concerned primarily with adolescence and awakening sexuality, offers perhaps the strongest grouping as Olds explores sexuality in an "endless... apprenticeship to the mortal." Least effective are the poems that follow, mainly about her children and her motherhood, where even Olds's powers of microscopic observation-of both self and other-do not always lift this material out of the mundane. The last poems celebrate love in marriage, portraying the maturing of erotic and emotional bonds over time ("love is simply our element,/ it is the summer night, we are in it.") While one might wish to see Olds taking more chances and expanding her subject matter, she does not fail to awaken us to the depth and beauty of familiar concerns.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (January 30, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679765603
• ISBN-13: 978-0679765608
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.4 x 8.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #875,827 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wellspring well done, April 18, 2002

By 

Jex Weisman (Tallahassee, FL, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wellspring: Poems (Paperback)

I enjoyed this book for several reasons - Olds' poetry is brilliant without being haughty or laiden with archaic vocabulary or tired style. Her straightforward honesty coupled with her conciseness makes her poetry easy to read. Such honesty and conciseness are easy to "overdo" or do wrong. Olds avoids both such mistakes. She is honest without being brutal or giving the reader a sense that they are recieving too much information and she is concise without being too brief and leaving the reading wanting more. Her style tells the reader exactly what she means to say and leaves us feeling as if we have recieved the perfect dose of poetry.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In her language, her voice, there is a naked view of thesoul, March 27, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Wellspring: Poems (Hardcover)

I first came across Sharon Olds' poetry in a volume of the
Best American Poetry edited by David Lehman. The poem,
True Love, which ends the hardcover edition of Wellspring
is a beautiful love song I first found there. That poem in
no way prepared me for the depth and range of feeling found
in Wellspring or the frank approach to the intimacy of
family and life. She leads subtly to the deepest of emotions, exposing the rawness of life and it's wildest
beauty. Riveted would be an apt description of reading
this book. There is an invitation to invasion of privacy,
which once taken leads the reader, first as witness and
finally as partner, to a celebration of living........

Chester Morrison 3/27/97

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Honesty, Integrity, Poetry, December 3, 2006

By 

P. Melzer (Chesapeake Bay) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wellspring: Poems (Paperback)

Sharon Olds work is always well-crafted and honest. Shocking to some, perhaps. (Evidently it does disturb Catherine Ross, whose anti Sharon Olds crusade from April of this year is so transparent--each of her neg reviews written in the same voice, though supposedly penned by different reviewers.) As a man, I have always had a great respect for Olds' writing, her views into the world and her ability to somehow transform pain from the past into something greater and more life-affirming. You will love this book, unless you are profoundly prudish.