Description
Book SynopsisWinner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize
Stag''s Leap, Sharon Olds'' stunningly poignant new sequence of poems, tells the story of a divorce, embracing strands of love, sex, sorrow, memory, and new freedom. In this wise and intimate telling - which carries us through the seasons when her marriage was ending - Sharon Olds opens her heart to the reader, sharing the feeling of invisibility that comes when we are no longer standing in love''s sight; the surprising physical passion that still exists between a couple during parting; the loss of everything from her husband''s smile to the set of his hip.
Olds is naked before us, curious and brave and even generous toward the man who was her mate for thirty years and now loves another woman. As she writes in the remarkable title poem, ''When anyone escapes, my heart / leaps up. Even when it''s I who am escaped from, / I am half on the side of the leaver''.
Olds'' propulsive
Trade Review
Sharon Olds, the winner of the 2012 TS Eliot Prize for Stag’s Leap, is the first female American Poet to win the prize, and perhaps the most accessible poet of her generation. -- Tom Payn * Telegraph *
Olds, who has always had a gift for describing intimacy, has, in a sense, had these poems thrown at her by life and allowed them to take root: they are stunning – the best of a formidable career. -- Kate Kellaway * Observer *
[A] brilliant and fearless poet. -- Joyce Carol Oates
A tremendous book of grace and gallantry which crowns the career of a world-class poet. -- Carol Ann Duffy * Huffington Post *
Taut and beautiful poems. -- Edna O'Brien * Guardian *
