The Father
Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, Poetry History & Criticism, Poetry, American
| Author: | Sharon Olds | ISBN: | 9780307760739 |
| Publisher: | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group | Publication: | December 5, 2012 |
| Imprint: | Knopf | Language: | English |
| Author: | Sharon Olds |
| ISBN: | 9780307760739 |
| Publisher: | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |
| Publication: | December 5, 2012 |
| Imprint: | Knopf |
| Language: | English |
The Father is a sequence of poems, a daughter's vision of a father's illness and death. It chronicles these events in a connected narrative, from the onset of the illness to reflections in the years after the death. The poems are impelled by a passion to know and a freedom to follow wherever the truth may lead, and it goes into areas of feeling and experience rarely entered in poetry . . . The ebullient language, the startling images, the sense of 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 Father is a sequence of poems, a daughter's vision of a father's illness and death. It chronicles these events in a connected narrative, from the onset of the illness to reflections in the years after the death. The poems are impelled by a passion to know and a freedom to follow wherever the truth may lead, and it goes into areas of feeling and experience rarely entered in poetry . . . The ebullient language, the startling images, the sense of 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.
