Blood, Tin, Straw: Poems Paperback - 1999 - 1st Edition

From the jacket flap

From Sharon Olds--a stunning new collection of poems that project a fresh spirit, a startling energy of language and counterpoint, and a moving, elegiac tone shot through with humor.
From poems that erupt out of history and childhood to those that embody the nurturing of a new generation of children and the transformative power of marital love, Sharon Olds takes risks, writing boldly of physical, emotional, and spiritual sensations that are seldom the stuff of poetry. These are poems that strike for the heart, as Sharon Olds captures our imagination with unexpected wordplay, sprung rhythms, and the disquieting revelations of ordinary life. Writing at the peak of her powers, this greatly admired poet gives us her finest collection.

"From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpt

The Necklace



At the worst of the depression, one moment in the office,
suddenly, my necklace shifted,
flowed across some high ribs
and sank down along the top of one breast
as if a creature had got into my shirt,
yet I felt its will-lessness, caress
of matter only, small whipper or
snapper, milk or garter, just
the vertebrae now, as if a stripped
spine had taken its coccyx in its jaw
around my throat -- s equator, and now
stirred on the mortal plates.  And these were
the pearls from my mother, as if she slithered
along me to say, Come away from your gloom,
your father, that garden is a grave, come away,
come away -- as if some crumbs of her milquetoast,
aged and polished to a gem hardness,
spoke in oyster Braille on my chest
near my own breast, suckler singing
to suckler, anti-Circe my mother
led me away from that trough with a light
raking, over me, of her wiggly whip -- just one
wobble along me, globe on her axis,
chariot-wheel of morning.

Media reviews

Citations

• Booklist, 03/15/2000, Page 1316
• Library Journal, 12/01/1999, Page 142
• Publishers Weekly, 09/27/1999, Page 98