The Dead and the Living

by Sharon Olds

Book Overview

The 1983 Lamont poetry selection of the Academy of American Poets.

The Dead and the Living presents a beautifully realized cycle of poems beginning with those that honor the dead, then poems that burrow into childhood, limning the uncomfortable; and culminating in poems for the living, moving outward toward love, marriage, children, toward "the tasting, and the giving of life."

Larry Lewis say, "The Dead and the Living is...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394715632
• ISBN13: 9780394715636
• Release Date: February 1984
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Fantastic collection

As always, Sharon Olds uses language in a thought-provoking, erotic, yet accessible way for her readers. Her poems are heavy, without weighing you down. She gives voice to our innermost thoughts, fears and desires, ones we didn't know we had until we've read her poetry and nod our heads in compassion and commiseration.

Polarizing ... her writing

I personally like her work and I think The Dead and the Living is best of her work. Other books seems to carry on her train of thought and her style in repetition, kinda like reviewing music. Some band has that same sound and once you've heard it, all their albums sound the same. Poetry is a lot like music; you either like her style or you don't as witnessed by many negative reviews here. I understand that one may not like her book or style; I'm just taken back by the vindictiveness and the personal nature of the attacks. I'm no poet, or claim to be a poetry teacher, so I'm not going to go into details of deconstructing her poetry and her style or subject matter. Not all of her poems here are gems; there are some duds in the book as well. All I can say is, judge for yourself; I think her writing is excellent enough that it at least merits consideration. I count her as one of the best of her generation in contemporary poetry.

Moved me

Every poem resonated with me. I have never been a big reader of poetry, but this is different. Moving.

Words were never this deep until now...

I like to think myself a poet. When I pick up a pen I am feeling out my life through the tiny cuts and scars of my hands. I am reaching for feeling and the heavy bud of truth. Sharon Olds has taught me words so bloody-red raw that filling myself with line after line of her beautiful, startling images has become a way for me to feed my own poetry addiction. She has taught me to find that pure, burning place inside myself so I might release it all through my own inky heart. The Dead and the Living is a masterpiece. Each poem burns with my desire to know more about this strong woman and her survival. I learn her emotion through "The Forms," in which she reveals the way she has been bent beneath every kind of love. Poem after poem reveals a kind of learned pain in which she concludes that even the sharpest parts of life can sometimes hold a soft spot. Every word dropped from her lip has me spooning and scraping and fighting for one more swallow. I lay this book on the kitchen counter where the sun is just going down, and I press my forehead hard against it. I feel the way pain must feel-- the way life and love must feel-- when you are knowing, breathing, living it through the beautiful flutters of another's shadow.

hauntingly beautiful

The most deeply moving poetry book I have ever read. Spectacular.