Woman with a Lettuce

In honor of Sharon Olds, who spoke today about her life, poetry and sanitary practices.

Sharon Olds

Sharon Olds was much funnier than expected - she elicited quite a few laughs from the audience. Her life story, about her feminism and growing up with Calvinist parents reflected so much about her work. She writes about family, aging and death, and her views on the world seem so enlightened compared to what is heard daily in the media. To me, Sharon Olds is a kind of modern Simone de Beauvoir, who channels her thoughts into beautiful, inspiring poetry.

Diagnosis
by Sharon Olds

By the time I was six months old, she knew something
was wrong with me. I got looks on my face
she had not seen on any child
in the family, or the extended family,
or the neighborhood. My mother took me in
to the pediatrician with the kind hands,
a doctor with a name like a suit size for a wheel:
Hub Long. My mom did not tell him
what she though in truth, that I was Possessed.
It wa sjust these strange looks on my face-
he held me, and conversed with me,
chatting as one does with a baby, and my mother
said, She's doing it now! Look!
She's doing it now! and the doctor said,
What your daughter has
is called a sense
of humor. Ohhh, she said, and took me
back to the house where that sense would be tested
and found to be incurable.