A original collection from the TS Eliot prizewinner finds beauty in the outrages visited on ageing bodiesSharon Olds’s inspired original collection alerts us to taboos we barely think approximately ordinarily. The book is exposed – in more ways than one – and could only fill 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 / approximately women is self-involved. You’re sixty / something years old,” he exclaims, or “and still/writing approximately the first time you got laid!”Actually,Olds is now 73. And here is a test: if, on reading her Ode of Withered Cleavage, and 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 remove a moment 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, or made trickier because the woman in question is her mother.
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Source: theguardian.com