Thursday, January 27, 2005

Sharon

I was impressed a great deal with Sharon Olds. She talked about writing hundreds of poems that she doesn’t show to anybody, she said she is continually writing. She was totally different in person than who I expected her to be. The media portrays her as this over the top woman who continually talks about her abuse and that is not all how she is in real life.

Sharon is very calm, kind, and you can tell she would be doing exactly what she is doing even if she had no recognition. She would be the woman writing, creating poems in her basement, going to schools and teaching children about literature.

Poetry is her first love. I am drawn to poets like that. I know it sounds incredibly corny but words do feel like this god we all serve and there are people who serve it for different reasons. I was impressed by her love for poetry. She is a very interesting human….

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Yes, she's very calm and mellow. You can tell she loves poetry by the way she talks about other people's work--very considerate, a good ear. She wrote new poems for the workshop and read them too. I'm curious if they will be poems that she works on. The first day, she acted like she didn't really like her poem, kinda shrugged it off. The second day, she was more interested. It would be cool if I was reading a journal sometime and saw her revised version published. She strikes me as the type who revises quite a bit.

David Vincenti said...

I heard her speak about the craft of poetry at last year's Dodge. I've known her work for a long time, and heard all about the "graphic portrayals" in her work. So I was stunned when she cited an old Methodist hymnal as a major influence on her poems. Hers was one of a dozen or so "Conversations on Craft" by major poets; but she was the only one who made it a genuine conversation - taking lots of questions, talking about her creative process, sharing her infectious enthusiasm for the making of poems... I agree - she's nothing like what I expected, but she's quite impressive.

(I write more about her at http://www.davidvincenti.com/writersblog/10-24-2004.html)

early hours of sky said...

thank you for posting this, it was very insightful. I love that she has poems no one will ever read.

Wendy Maybury said...

Sharon Olds has always been one of my favorite poets... I really enjoyed reading your entry.

early hours of sky said...

thanks wendy and welcome