The Father: Poems

A searing sequence of poems about a daughter’s vision of a father’s illness and death–by the Pulitzer Prize and T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry winner, called “a poet for these times, a powerful woman who won’t back down” (San Francisco Chronicle).

The Father chronicles these events in a connected narrative, from the onset of the illness to reflections in the years after the death. The book is, most of all, a series of acts of understanding. The poems are impelled by a passion to know, and a freedom to follow wherever the truth may lead. The book goes into area of feeling and experience rarely entered in poetry.

The ebullient language, the startling, far-reaching images, the sense of extraordinary connectedness seize us immediately. Sharon Olds transforms a harsh reality with truthfulness, with beauty, with humor–and without bitterness.

The deep pain in The Father arises from a death, and from understanding a life. But there is joy as well. In the end, we discover we have been reading not a grim accounting but an inspiriting tragedy, transcending the personal. The radiance and daring that have always distinguished Sharon Old’s work find here their most powerful expression.

Author: Sharon Olds
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: 04/21/1992
Pages: 96
Weight: 0.3lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.88w x 0.28d
ISBN: 9780679740025
Language: English