Here's a feature on Sharon Olds in a recent NYT Book section. (She's just published a new book, Balladz.) It's pretty lavish with the praise. Then again, that's pretty much how poetry criticism functions most of the time.
Call me repressed, but I've never read her work comfortably. TMI, is what I have always thought of a Sharon Olds poem, many of them, at least. Her voice has always, to me, been like that of somebody who just can't share the pleasantries of the day and be done with you, but has to sink into PERSONAL STUFF I'd rather not know. I like a conversation that stays on the surface. If you're going deep, at least where a mask.
No amount of hauling in the authorities--in this case, Ocean Vuong and Terrance Hayes--is going to convince me that the work of Sharon Olds is anything but Confessional in that way that makes me want not to turn the page but toss the book. Her co-faculty at NYU insist that she's not doing anything other poet celebs have done themselves (examples: Ginsberg, O'Hare) but gotten away with as innovators, even as cool. "Ode to My Clitoris," or whatever, is not the same kind of read as "Lana Turner Is Dead." There's poetry as personism, and there's over-sharing.
Well, maybe you'll like it. But as for me, call me repressed and pass the condoms.
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