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Sharon Olds

The first poem of Sharon Olds’s I ever read came from my brother Tim.  It was a pretty blow-you-away, killer kind of poem called “I Go Back to May 1937.”  You can read it here.  It’s one of the great and damning poems read during Sean Penn’s movie Into the Wild.

Of course I acquired all of her books immediately.

Her new book of poems is out now, and I’m trying to get a few in every night.  Let’s see.  How can I best describe them?  They’re hard hitting.  They’re honest.  They’re shocking.

There’s a poem called “Calvinist Parents” that opens with a review of some of her older work: “Sometime during the Truman Administration, Sharon Olds’s parents tied her to a chair, and she is still writing about it.” –review of The Unswept Room

I will be the first to say that everyone of us has dark pasts, in the sense that we’ve all been hurt by someone, some place, some event.  Take your pick.  I told Dan a few weeks ago, that one of my long-ago therapists said that everyone has at least one seminal event in their lives–something that changed them forever.  Dan paused a minute and said, “I don’t have one.”  But then he came back to me the next day and said, “I’ve been thinking about that comment.  I think I might have one.”

Sometimes writing about it can help.  Sometimes the truth needs to be dangled out there in front of your nose…and I’m going to add quickly, others’ noses, because in the honesty, healing can begin–even for those who might have had a similar experience to yours.  There’s no sense in shoving everything under the rug.  How does that help anybody?

I have a soft spot in my heart for those who have been hurt by the church or by people in the church (you pick your denomination; it doesn’t matter), because I was hurt by someone in the church (actually I take that back…that word “someone” should be plural to the nth degree).  So, it will always be my baby–the thing that I’m willing to dialogue about–because, in the end, like my long-ago therapist said (in shock), “I’m amazed you still believe in God.”  And I said, “He’s not the same God.  No God I believe in would condone those kinds of things.”

A side note: all this makes me sound like I couldn’t hurt someone.  I’m sure I have, many times over, and sad will be the day when I learn about them.  I’m working on that, minute by minute, day by day.  Some day when Liliana writes them all down, I will cry a thousand tears.

[Post image: Sharon Olds]

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