A Poem A Day : 25 – 49½ by Sharon Olds

by steww

A poem  day? This blog should be retitled an Olds a day. In the true and living proof of the wholly random nature of the Random Poetry Generator today’s poem was written by the same author as yesterdays. When  you consider the groaning weight of anthologies not to mention the copious volumes of single author books from which it has to choose this is a fine coincidence and one of which I heartily approve.

That the poet is Sharon Olds is of course an enormously important factor here.  I dare say I’d be less enamoured to face consecutive days racking my brains to understand what Eliot or Durrell were rattling on about so I’m grateful for that too. Yesterday’s fine poem came from my oldest Olds collection and today’s choice bookends that rather neatly by being drawn from my most recently acquired collection. The book is The Unswept Room and was published in 2003 by the good people of Jonathan Cape which proves they must know what they’re about.

Olds is a captivating writer. She draws me in with the immediacy of her language, the universal and yet personal nature of her subject matter and the impact of her words often remains long after putting the book down. I was intrigued to see just how her writing may have matured and changed, if at all, in the years which passed in between The Sign Of Saturn and The Unswept Room. However I was quickly disabused of such ideas. One cannot discern such changes by reading only two poems. So I shall just have to read both books and get back to you on that. Oh dear, what a chore.

49½ is a moving poem about a woman facing the end of her fecundity and with it her own mortality. She is, as Olds puts it, a ‘human gone out upon it’s longest thread’ the fragility of old age beckons now her young life is biologically over. The images of emptiness are splendid and original, the spasmodic jerking back from loss and wonder to an attempt at positivity are perfectly timed and the combination of the body and spirit is so well expressed.

When I was in the womb, thirty

years of half lives beaded their dew

on my inner wall.

Blimey! The image of the ‘leash of use’ being ‘loosened’ is particularly good and all through the poem one gets the sense of loss tempered with release. A truly brilliant poem from a fantastic poet. If I get another from her tomorrow I shall be a happy man.