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The Gold Cell (Knopf Poetry Series)

Sharon Olds

Paperback | Pages: 112 pages

Rating: 4.23 | 2315 Users | 101 Reviews

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Original Title:	The Gold Cell (Knopf Poetry Series)
ISBN:	0394747704 (ISBN13: 9780394747705)
Edition Language:

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I think "The Gold Cell" rests more comfortably in the 3.5 star space, but alas. Is this a great volume? Not to my mind. It is a quite good one, very solid in places, and stunning in a few. The thing is, just as it shines brightly in some moments, it falls entirely dull at others. I found the section on her father (the second?) to be particularly trying to work through. The book is broken into four parts: one outside of the biographical (?) narrator's vantage point; one directed to her father; one to her lovers and concerning her sexuality; one regarding the experiences and sensations of motherhood.

Knowing me--as you don't--and my unadulterated idolatry of poets like Plath and Sexton, this book should have floored me. As I said, when Olds is able to boil something down, she can be incredibly effective. See the poems "Cambridge Elegy," "The Girl," "Saturn," "The Quest," "Boy Out in the World," and "The Green Shirt." But at times, I find the criticism I've so often heard directed toward Olds--that she falls back on the crutch of shock-value when she's at a poem's weak space--to be justified. For all its humor, I simply cannot believe "The Pope's Penis" to be a great poem. A good one? Sure. A memorable one? Certainly. But for the life of me, I don't get why people blab on and on about that poem (or why I read that for a Modern Poetry course a couple of years ago) when they can look to her other more astonishingly written, deeply felt poems.

Moreover, the wild cries of how groundbreaking her work's breaking of taboos is seem to me slightly misguided. She's certainly speaking of often-silenced topics, but she's not really the first. Had she published this book two decades earlier, she'd have broken that ground; but as it stands, see (I hate to bring them up again) Plath or Sexton on a number of these topics: father/daughter incest; sexual or emotional violence against women; female sexuality; abortion; eroticism; &co&co. She hasn't done it first, though I certainly appreciate that she carries the torch in many respects.

I don't know how this turned into a pitchfork & torch review of the book. I did like it and certainly look forward to reading more Olds. So bottom line is this: the book is stunning at its best points and dreary at its worst. Other poems just get lost in the shuffle between the good and the bad. I'll be curious to pick up other books & see if they are more consistent in quality than this one was. I tend to agree with another reviewer here on GR--the poems are too often boring on the page even if exciting when read aloud. But ultimately, "Cambridge Elegy" is worth the price of admission alone.

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Title	:	The Gold Cell (Knopf Poetry Series)
Author	:	Sharon Olds
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	First Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 112 pages
Published	:	February 12th 1987 by Knopf Publishing Group
Categories	:	Poetry. Fiction. Literature

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Ratings: 4.23 From 2315 Users | 101 Reviews

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She's a remarkable poet. The poems are vivid, original, memorable. The star system is confusing to me. Rating for the world, I think I should give the book a five for skill and power. I marked it down for me because, for where I am at this moment, I found it too disturbing.

Sharon Old's writing is thematically very deep and raw, and the writing is beautiful while also being harsh. From a technical standpoint, being a writer myself, I like it very much. However, there are only so many poems that need to have sex included in the imagery. Quite frankly, my favorites are the ones that don't have it. (Basically, the entire third section of the book)If you are a fan of poetry, you should probably check this out as a great example of confessional poetry. If you are a

Today I'm not interested in perfection. I'm interested in truth, in viewpoints unconcerned with spin, in observations that have nothing to sell but a humanized reality. Oh, thank you, Sharon Olds. Your poetic ruminations -- of you facing your parents as the troubling creatures they were, of you watching your children as the trembling creations they are -- are like little electric jolts bringing me back to life, to consciousness. You reanimate the zombified mind and fix my eyes up with an overdue

There are so many great lines and so many classic poems in this book, it's like reading a best-of collection. Olds's talent is ridiculous, nearly unreachable in this collection. I read some of these poems and felt changed, like I was absorbing something that could barely fit into me.The pendulum here swings from anger and horror to beauty and love effortlessly, like life in real time. Favorite poems include "Summer Solstice, New York City," "The Girl," "I Go Back to May 1937," "Looking at My

Always frank and open-hearted, Sharon Olds gets to the core of daily life--tangled relationships, lingering fears, and the hold of the past as well as peaceful, healing times and joys large and small.

I appreciate that Olds uses material from her life to make a beautiful poem. at times I find the sexual language to be a little too much, though. also at times i feel like the language could be a little more original or she could stray from her comfort zone to discover a different structure or tone, but if she did, she wouldn't be her. there are poets who stick to one mode and it works for them and that's what they are known for. and there are poets who differ so greatly in various poems that

This was a collection of poems that each told there own little story. Most had either one of two themes: family and sex. Each was unique in it's own way but they are unusual as well. Each poem calls attention to serious topics of today's world. In all, each poem wants to remind us of how the author views the human species way of life.The author, Sharon Olds, was not afraid to use foreshadowing. Every poem seemed to define our way of life by using hyperboles and similes. The absence of rhyming