Sharon Olds’s inspired new collection alerts us to taboos we barely think about ordinarily. The book is exposed – in more ways than one – and could only have been written by a woman: bold, no longer young and inextinguishably curious. In one poem she reports that her partner mocks her: “My partner says that what I write / about women is self-involved. You’re sixty / something years old,” he exclaims, “and still/writing about the first time you got laid!”
Actually, Olds is now 73. And here is a test: if, on reading her Ode of Withered Cleavage, you squirm, you will need to fortify yourself further before sampling the neighbouring poems: Ode to the Clitoris, Blow Job Ode and Douche Bag Ode. And now take a second look at the cleavage ode and reflect that it is Olds herself recoiling with reflex distaste at what age does to a woman’s body, made trickier because the woman in question is her mother.
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