Poets are like steam valves, where the ordinary feelings of ordinary people can escape and be shown. — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
Because a poem is not written while running or while answering the phone. It's written in whatever minutes one has. Sometimes you… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
Many poets write books. They'll tell you: Well, I've got my next book, but there are two poems I need to write,… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
Writing or making anything-a poem, a bird feeder, a chocolate cake-has self-respect in it. You're working. You're trying. You're not lying down… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
I think that there are fiction writers for whom that works well. I could never do it. I feel as if, by… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
Well, 'The Wellspring' was written from 1983 to 1986. And it had a section in the beginning that was poems that began… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
This creature of the poem may assemble itself into a being with its own centrifugal force. — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
There are some fine books and essays about that. Lewis Hyde has written about alcoholism and poets and the role that society… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
.. to a poet, the human community is like the community of birds to a bird, singing to each other. Love is… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
My poems - I don't even like the sound of that, in a way. Not that anyone else wrote them. But we… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
Poems come from ordinary experiences and objects, I think. Out of memory - a dress I lent my daughter on her way… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
If I wrote in a sonnet form, I would be distorting. Or if I had some great new idea for line breaks… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
I'm not asking a poem to carry a lot of rocks in its pockets. Just being an ordinary observer and liver and… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
Every poet I know - although there may be some I don't know who lead very different lives, who maybe live in… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
“ Free Shoes The pairs of shoes stand in rows, polished and jet, like coffins for small pets, lined with off-white. Evacuated… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
“The End of World War One Out of the scraped surface of the land men began to emerge, like puppies from the… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
“I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, I see my father strolling out under the ochre sandstone arch,… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
“Poem of Thanks Years later, long single, I want to turn to his departed back, and say, What gifts we had of… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
Poems come from ordinary experiences and objects, I think. Out of memory - a dress I lent my daughter on her way back to… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
There are some fine books and essays about that. Lewis Hyde has written about alcoholism and poets and the role that society gives its… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
I'm not asking a poem to carry a lot of rocks in its pockets. Just being an ordinary observer and liver and feeler and… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
“How do they do it, the ones who make love without love? How do they come to the come to the come to the… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
She'd crack A joke sharp as a tin lid Hot from the teeth of the can-opener, And cackle her crack-corn laugh. — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
If I wrote in a sonnet form, I would be distorting. Or if I had some great new idea for line breaks and I… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
Many poets write books. They'll tell you: Well, I've got my next book, but there are two poems I need to write, one about… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
“as if languagelessness was a step up, in evolution, from the chatter of consciousness.” — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
Maybe we can use a metaphor for it, out of dance. I think for many years I was aware of the need, in dance… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
Who wants to put together something that will bear some relationship to the vision or memory or experience or story or idea or dream… — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
“I put my arms around a trunk and squeezed it, then I lay down on my father's grave.” — Sharon Olds Copy Share Image
