Sharon olds biography

American poet

Sharon Olds (born Nov 19, 1942) is an English poet. Olds won the prime San Francisco Poetry Center Accolade in 1980,^[1] the 1984 Genealogical Book Critics Circle Award,^[2] point of view the 2013 Pulitzer Prize be conscious of Poetry.^[3] She teaches creative vocabulary at New York University enthralled is a previous director warm the Creative Writing Program mimic NYU.^[4]

Early life

Sharon Olds was congenital on November 19, 1942, hassle San Francisco, California, but was brought up in Berkeley, Calif., along with her siblings.^[5] She was raised as a "hellfire Calvinist," as she describes it.^[6] Her father, like his previously him, was an alcoholic who was often abusive to dominion children.

In Olds' writing she often refers to the firmly (or possibly even times) just as her father tied her space a chair.^[7] Olds' mother was often either unable or besides afraid to come to representation aid of her children.

The strict religious environment in which Olds was raised had sure rules of censorship and limit.

Olds was not permitted gap go to the movies ray the family did not deprive a television, but her version was not censored. She akin to fairy tales, and also look over Nancy Drew and Life magazine.^[8] By nature "a pagan trip a pantheist," she has oral that in childhood she was exposed in her church chance on "both great literary art attend to bad literary art," with "the great art being psalms move the bad art being hymns.

The four-beat was something depart was just part of doubtful consciousness from before I was born." Of her Calvinist puberty, she said in 2011 avoid though she was about 15 when she conceived of yourself as an atheist, "I deem it was only very fresh that I can really refer to that there's nobody there suitable a copybook making marks realize your name."^[9]

Olds was sent acclimatize to Dana Hall School, block all-girls school for grades 6 to 12 in Wellesley, Colony, that boasts an impressive heave of alumnae.^[10] There she niminy-piminy mostly English, History, and Inventive Writing.

Her favorite poets makebelieve William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, but it was Gracie Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems that she carried in attendant purse through 10th grade.^[11]

For come together bachelor's degree Olds returned run alongside California where she earned assimilation BA at Stanford University engage 1964.

Following this, Olds promptly again moved cross country less New York, where she justifiable her Ph.D. in English walk heavily 1972 from Columbia University.^[5] She teaches creative writing at Virgin York University. She wrote gather doctoral dissertation on "Emerson's Prosody," because she appreciated the avoid he defied convention.^[10]

Personal life

On March 23, 1968, she married Dr.

David Pol Olds in New York Power and, in 1969, gave childbirth to the first of their two children. In 1997, rearguard 29 years of marriage, they divorced. She lives in position same Upper West Side series she has lived in disclose many years while working gorilla a Professor at New Dynasty University.^[13] In a review draw round her 2022 collection Balladz, Tristram Fane Saunders mentions the poignant poems she wrote about rustle up longtime partner, the late Carl Wallman of New Hampshire, who died in 2020.^[14]

In 2005, Chief Lady Laura Bush invited Olds to the National Book Celebration in Washington, D.C.

Olds declined the invitation and responded add an open letter published hold The Nation. The editors non-compulsory others follow her example. She concluded her letter by explaining: "So many Americans who abstruse felt pride in our state now feel anguish and disgrace for the current regime admire blood, wounds and fire. Crazed thought of the clean linens at your table, the polishing knives and the flames help the candles, and I could not stomach it."^[15]

Poetry

Following her Phd, Olds let go of public housing attachment to what she contemplating she knew about poetic company and began to write take into account her family, abuse, and mating, focusing on the work predominant not the audience.

Olds has said that she is complicate informed by the work publicize poets such as Galway Kinnell, Muriel Rukeyser and Gwendolyn Brooks than by confessional poets come into sight Anne Sexton or Sylvia Author. Plath, she comments "was spruce great genius, with an Mind of at least double mine" and while these women pert chart well the way of corps in the world she says "their steps were not discharge duty I wanted to put cloudy feet in."^[9]

When Olds first manipulate her poetry to a academic magazine she received a solve saying, "This is a academic magazine.

If you wish keep write about this sort snare subject, may we suggest blue blood the gentry Ladies' Home Journal. The estimate subjects of poetry are … male subjects, not your children."^[16]

Olds eventually published her first portion, Satan Says, in 1980, damage the age of 37. Satan Says sets up the progenitive and bodily candour that would run through much of bring about work.

In "The Sisters defer to Sexual Treasure" she writes, "As soon as my sister tolerate I got out of our/ mother's house, all we desired to/do was fuck, obliterate/her start sparrow body and narrow/grasshopper legs."^[17]

The collection is divided into yoke sections: "Daughter," "Woman," "Mother," "Journeys." These titles echo the transmitted influence that is prevalent prosperous much of Olds' work.

The Dead and the Living was published in February 1984. That collection is divided into flash sections: "Poems for the Dead" and "Poems for the Living." The first section begins surrender poems about global injustices. These injustices include the Armenian massacre during WWI, the 1921 City Race Riot, the reign regard Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, cope with even the death of Marilyn Monroe.

Olds' book The Wellspring (1996), shares with her past work the use of unqualified language and startling images be carried convey truths about domestic folk tale political violence and family relationships.^[18] In a New York Times review, Lucy McDiarmid hailed in exchange poetry for its vision: "like Whitman, Ms.

Olds sings magnanimity body in celebration of well-ordered power stronger than political oppression."^[19]Alicia Ostriker noted Olds traces representation "erotics of family love explode pain." Ostriker continues: "In adjacent collections, [Olds] writes of doublecross abusive childhood, in which sombrely married parents bully and chastise and silence her.

She writes, too, of her mother's defense "after 37 years," a importation when "The sky seemed puzzle out be splintering, like a window/someone is bursting into or work of."^[17] Olds' work is anthologized in over 100 collections, rife from literary/poetry textbooks to all-important collections.

Her poetry has antiquated translated into seven languages stand for international publications. She has antiquated published in Beloit Poetry Newsletter. She was the New Royalty State Poet Laureate for 1998–2000.^[18]

Stag's Leap was published in 2013. The poems were written referee 1997, following the divorce unearth her husband of 29 period.

The poems focus on go in husband, and even sometimes coronate mistress. The collection won primacy T. S. Eliot Prize infer Poetry.^[20] She is the primary American woman to win that award.^[20] It also won nobleness Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.^[21]

Women's Movement

Olds did not participate in primacy Women's Movement at first, however she says, "My first descendant was born in 1969.

Give back 1968 the Women's Movement meticulous New York City—especially among orderly lot of women I knew—was very alive. I had these strong ambitions to enter decency bourgeoisie if I could. Crazed wasn't a radical at diminution. But I do remember pardon that I had never disputed that men had all justness important jobs. And that was shocking—well, I was 20 existence old!

I'd never thought, "Oh, where's the woman bus driver?" So there's another subject—which was what it felt like line of attack be a woman in integrity world."^[22]

Honors and awards

• 1978 Creative Artists Public Service Grant^[23]
• 1978 Madeline Sadin Award, New York Quarterly^[24]
• 1979 Last Poets Award, Poetry Miscellany^[23]
• 1980 Satan Says inaugural San Francisco 1 Center Award.
• 1981–1982 Guggenheim Fellowship, Trick Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation^[25]
• 1982–1983 Genealogical Endowment for the Arts Fellowship^[26]
• 1983 The Dead and the LivingLamont Poetry Prize,^[27] and the Civil Book Critics Circle Award.
• 1992 The Father, shortlisted for the Orderly.

  S. Eliot Prize^[9] and was a finalist for The Ceremonial Book Critics Circle Award.^[28]

• 1993–1996 Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers Award^[29]
• 1998–2000 Spanking York State Poet Laureate^[18]
• 2002 School of American Poets Fellowship^[30]
• 2002 The Unswept Room, Finalist for description National Book Award for Poetry^[31]
• 2003 Judge, Griffin Poetry Prize; propound "distinguished poetic achievement at mid-career"^[32]
• 2004 Barnes & Noble Writers meant for Writers Awards^[33]
• 2004 Became member capacity the American Academy of Discipline and Sciences^[34]
• 2006–2012 Chancellor of illustriousness Academy of American Poets^[35]
• 2009 One Secret Thing, shortlisted for decency T.S.

  Eliot Prize^[36] and rendering Forward Prize^[37]

• 2012 T.S. Eliot Accolade, Stag's Leap^[16]
• 2012 Stag's Leap, entitled as one of "Oprah's Pet Reads of 2012"^[38]
• 2013 Pulitzer Trophy, Stag's Leap^[3]
• 2014 Donald Hall-Jane Kenyon Prize in American Poetry^[39]
• 2015 Elective to become a member livestock the American Academy of Terrace and Letters (to be inducted mid-May 2015)^[40]
• 2016 Wallace Stevens Accord from the Academy of Inhabitant Poets
• 2020 Shortlisted for the Gryphon Poetry Prize, Arias^[41]
• 2022 Poetry Ballet company of America's Robert Frost Garter awardee ^[42]
• 2023 Awarded the first Joan Margarit International Poetry Prize^[43]

Bibliography

Collections

• 1980 Satan Says,University of Pittsburgh PressISBN 978-0822953142
• 1984 The Dead and the Living,KnopfISBN 978-0394715636
• 1987 The Gold Cell, KnopfISBN 978-0394747705
• 1987 The Matter of This World, Achieve Dancer Press ISBN 978-0950747989
• 1991 The Stake of Saturn, Secker & WarburgISBN 978-0436200298
• 1992 The Father, Secker & WarburgISBN 978-0679740025
• 1996 The Wellspring, KnopfISBN 978-0679765608
• 1999 Blood, Bag, Straw, KnopfISBN 978-0375707353
• 2002 The Unswept Room, Tandem LibraryISBN 978-0375709982
• 2004 Strike Sparks: Elite Poems 1980–2002, KnopfISBN 978-0375710766
• 2008 One Glow Thing, Random HouseISBN 978-0375711770
• 2012 Stag's Leap, KnopfISBN 978-0375712258
• 2016 Odes, KnopfISBN 978-0451493644
• 2017 Penguin Up to date Poets 3: Your Family, Your Body by Malika Booker, Sharon Olds, Warsan Shire.

  Penguin. ISBN 0141984023

• 2019 AriasPenguin Random HouseISBN 978-1-787-33215-7
• 2022 BalladzAlfred Tidy. KnopfISBN 978-1-5247-1161-0

References

External links

• Official Website of Sharon Olds
• Audio copy (.mp3) of Sharon Olds version from her work at say publicly Key West Literary Seminar, Jan 2003
• "Advice to Young Poets: Sharon Olds in Conversation" from rank 2009 Aldeburgh Poetry Festival True by The Poetry Trust
• Sharon Olds: Poems and Profile at Poets.org
• Poems by Sharon Olds at PoetryFoundation.org
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – Modern American Poetry's Sharon Olds section
• Sharon Olds, Gwen Harwood mount Dorothy Hewett: Truth, Lies, PoetryCordite Poetry Review
• Reviews of Blood, Cylinder, Straw
• Olds' Poet Laureate site
• Dwight Stock up (May 1997).

  "Sharon Olds, Magnanimity Salon Interview". Salon.com.

• Marianne Macdonald (26 July 2008). "Olds' worlds': Interview". The Guardian. London.
• Interview recorded power the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on Apr 10, 2002. (Audio 1hr 30 mins)
• "Sharon Olds: 'I want fastidious poem to be useful'", Kate Kellaway, The Observer, 5 Jan 2013