Ode to Odes by Sharon Olds

Ahhh, Monday again. It’s a sunny, if not warm, day here in New York City, and I am sitting at Caffe Reggio on MacDougal with my dear sister, Kathryn, tippytapping away to write this post for you. We write together often, but it is particularly fitting today because I will be writing about the book that she gave me for my birthday last year, Odes by Sharon Olds. This is my first post on a book of poetry - in fact the first time I’ve read a book of poetry since school, so I’m going to be figuring it out as I go. To start with, and to get it out of the way - I’m obsessed. I recommend this book (and probably any other book by Sharon Olds, although I haven’t read them yet) to everyone. Her poetry is incredibly accessible, and written in free verse that is easy to understand and often reads like a narrative. That means that if you’re reading this and thinking, “I don’t get poetry, it’s hard to understand, etc,” you have no excuse not to at least try Sharon on for size.

Her subject matter is personal and frequent themes include sex, love, loss and abuse. In some of my light extracurricular reading on Sharon, I have learned that some critics call her self-indulgent, or narcissistic, and while I can understand where that criticism stems from, I cannot agree. Many of her poems begin and end with her - unpacking and seemingly processing her own experiences - but they are deeply relatable and broadly human. She also has an incredible knack for writing about ordinary things and events - things and events that might not seem worthy of poetry. Sharon proves that they are. I also want to be very clear that the subject matter and accessibility of her poetry does not take away from the art of it. I was consistently awed by her stylistic and linguistic powers in rendering pain and joy and beauty and ugliness with a clarity that struck to the core.

Before I get carried away speaking generally about Sharon’s poetry, I have a little (non-comprehensive) list of things that I want to draw attention to, and that I hope will convince you to pick up a copy of this collection. First, as implied by the title, Odes is comprised of only odes, and I have always been a sucker for odes. My first memory of an ode, or of learning about the form, was funnily enough, in a high school Spanish class when we read Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to the Artichoke.” What struck me then, and applies equally to Sharon’s work is the way in which odes allow for and encourage the celebration of the ordinary and the everyday. In this category, Sharon gives us masterpieces such as “Ode to the Tampon,” “Spoon Ode,” and “Ode to Dirt.” What I really love about this collection is the way that Sharon pushes beyond ode-ing commonplace things, into the celebration of things often thought of as undesirable, gross, bad, etc. She gives us “Hip Replacement Ode,” “Douche-Bag Ode,” and “Sick Couch Ode.” She does it incredibly well and succeeds in reflecting the way in which nothing can be truly bad - just as nothing good and sweet can be purely good and sweet. Unlike other odes, Sharon does not simply sing the praises of the thing or experience she singles out in each poem. It’s more complex than that - she celebrates in spite of, but also because of the things that make her subject matter bad or sad or painful.

Now, it would not be possible to talk about Sharon Olds, this book included, without talking about sex. She is well known for her poems in that quarter, and in this collection we get odes to the clitoris, the penis, the condom, blow jobs, to the word Vulva, to the vagina, a “Celibate’s Ode to Balls,” and not one but two odes to the hymen. And those are just the ones that have sex-related titles. The interesting thing about these poems is that although they are erotic in nature (some more than others), they go beyond eroticism into something deeper. A couple things really stood out to me about Sharon’s approach to writing about sex. The first, as you may have gathered from the list above, is that she often comes at it from a biological standpoint. The human body is celebrated purely for its form - for just existing, as well as for the functions its various appendages can serve. She hones in on the fun and the pleasure that comes from sex, often through a lens of loss - how sweet and good it was in retrospect. This sharpens the sense of miracle, of wonder at what our bodies are capable of - something really worth missing. But aside from that, the second thing that really struck me was the scope with which she considers sex. It’s not just about the immediate, it’s about the past and the present and the future all at once. Her consideration of sex includes and depends upon the biological imperative to reproduce, and her descriptions of sex acts often refer to the actual mechanics of reproduction. I found this aspect of her writing in particular to be very moving.

Among many other favorite things, one of the big ones for me with this collection is the way that Sharon writes about the body, or I suppose, more accurately, her own body. I’ve touched on this a bit already but I want to focus on it because I was struck by how relevant Sharon’s attitude really is. Body image, and discussion around body image seems to pervade in media, social and otherwise. More than ever before, we are flooded with images of people with “perfect bodies” not to mention the faces and the hair and the fake tan and the fake nails and the, and the….The cult of celebrity means that normal people are constantly bombarded with images of models, actors, musicians, etc. who have thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions (?) of dollars at their disposal to spend on treatments and procedures and surgeries that make them look “perfect.” And then those same people walk around talking about how all you have to do is drink water and rub olive oil on your face to look like them. It’s disturbing on more levels than one.

For women in particular, I notice (and am certainly not the first to notice) a hyper fixation on aging, and how to avoid, at least superficially, this previously unavoidable part of life. I don’t want to come across preachy - I care about my appearance, and I want to look as good (and young) as possible, for as long as possible just as much as the next girl. But I find the fear of aging that is becoming more and more prevalent to be sad at best and hateful (to self more than to anyone else) at worst. And so I love Sharon for writing, “Ode of Withered Cleavage” and “Ode to Wattles,” “Ode to My Fat,” “Ode to Stretch Marks.” I know it seems silly because I’m 24 - I’m not aging rapidly, and I have no discernible wrinkles. But, in a way, I look forward to aging, and to looking old when it’s time for me to look old. Sharon gets it. She writes, “I want to praise / what goes one way, what never recovers. / I want to live to an age when I look / hardly human…” (27). And: “So the language of aging, / the code of it, the etching and the scribbling / and silvering, are signs to me, of / getting to live out my full term, / enduring to become what I have loved” (82-83). Looking at her sagging skin, she recognizes her “crone beauty, in its first youth” (78). I could go on, but I’ll refrain. I don’t know if the point I’m trying to make has come across. I don’t wish to be old and wrinkled, and I doubt I’ll wish for it when I start to be old and wrinkled. I’ll probably think back on this moment and say, “what a lunatic I was.” But I hope I don’t. I hope I’m like Sharon.

Now, since I’ve gone on longer than I meant to, a few honorable mentions:

“Double Ode for Hazel” is one of the best poems about a dog that I’ve ever read.

“Valentinceous” takes a spot in my top five made up words of all time (from “Victuals Dream Ode”).

I find Sharon’s poems dedicated to specific people especially moving - particularly, “Stanley Kunitz Ode” and “Trilobite Ode”

Sharon’s poetry reminds me a lot of Walt Whitman’s, which is just about the biggest complement I’m able to give - I took a class on Walt Whitman in college, and his poetry made me cry multiple times IN class, but I’ll have to save that for another post.

“Legs Ode” and “Ode to Whiskers” and “Ode to My Sister” are other favorites that I haven’t mentioned yet.

To summarize this post that is kind of all over the place, reading this collection was a really wonderful experience. I have always loved poetry, but aside from my brilliant poet sister’s work (the next Sharon Olds), I haven’t read much of it recently. I now realize what a tragedy that is. On multiple occasions while reading this book, I was pleasantly arrested by Sharon’s words. I was gasping on the subway, and laughing on my couch, and crying in my bed as I worked my way through these odes. I recommend not only that you all read this particular collection of poetry, but also that we all (myself included) read more poetry in general.