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Original Title:	The Gold Cell (Knopf Poetry Series)
ISBN:	0394747704 (ISBN13: 9780394747705)
Edition Language:

The Gold Cell (Knopf Poetry Series)

Sharon Olds

Paperback | Pages: 112 pages

Rating: 4.23 | 2315 Users | 101 Reviews

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I think "The Gold Cell" rests more comfortably in the 3.5 star space, but alas. Is this a great volume? Not to my mind. It is a quite good one, very solid in places, and stunning in a few. The thing is, just as it shines brightly in some moments, it falls entirely dull at others. I found the section on her father (the second?) to be particularly trying to work through. The book is broken into four parts: one outside of the biographical (?) narrator's vantage point; one directed to her father; one to her lovers and concerning her sexuality; one regarding the experiences and sensations of motherhood.

Knowing me--as you don't--and my unadulterated idolatry of poets like Plath and Sexton, this book should have floored me. As I said, when Olds is able to boil something down, she can be incredibly effective. See the poems "Cambridge Elegy," "The Girl," "Saturn," "The Quest," "Boy Out in the World," and "The Green Shirt." But at times, I find the criticism I've so often heard directed toward Olds--that she falls back on the crutch of shock-value when she's at a poem's weak space--to be justified. For all its humor, I simply cannot believe "The Pope's Penis" to be a great poem. A good one? Sure. A memorable one? Certainly. But for the life of me, I don't get why people blab on and on about that poem (or why I read that for a Modern Poetry course a couple of years ago) when they can look to her other more astonishingly written, deeply felt poems.

Moreover, the wild cries of how groundbreaking her work's breaking of taboos is seem to me slightly misguided. She's certainly speaking of often-silenced topics, but she's not really the first. Had she published this book two decades earlier, she'd have broken that ground; but as it stands, see (I hate to bring them up again) Plath or Sexton on a number of these topics: father/daughter incest; sexual or emotional violence against women; female sexuality; abortion; eroticism; &co&co. She hasn't done it first, though I certainly appreciate that she carries the torch in many respects.

I don't know how this turned into a pitchfork & torch review of the book. I did like it and certainly look forward to reading more Olds. So bottom line is this: the book is stunning at its best points and dreary at its worst. Other poems just get lost in the shuffle between the good and the bad. I'll be curious to pick up other books & see if they are more consistent in quality than this one was. I tend to agree with another reviewer here on GR--the poems are too often boring on the page even if exciting when read aloud. But ultimately, "Cambridge Elegy" is worth the price of admission alone.

Identify Of Books The Gold Cell (Knopf Poetry Series)

Title	:	The Gold Cell (Knopf Poetry Series)
Author	:	Sharon Olds
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	First Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 112 pages
Published	:	February 12th 1987 by Knopf Publishing Group
Categories	:	Poetry. Fiction. Literature

Rating Of Books The Gold Cell (Knopf Poetry Series)

Ratings: 4.23 From 2315 Users | 101 Reviews

Crit Of Books The Gold Cell (Knopf Poetry Series)

I guess I'm on a poetry kick. I couldn't really decide how to rate this book because half of the poems are brilliant and half of them kinda suck. So I gave it 4 stars based on the really good ones. There are two specific poems that really stick out in my mind. One is about a young love that dies (literally) and the other is about her kids. Now that I am a mother the kids ones really affect me. I get it now.

I always feel like I'm reading her diary whenever I open up a book of Sharon Olds' poetry. A juicy, carefully written diary she's left open on my bedside table.

The renown of Sharon Oldss work is partly due to her ability to have no inhibitions about bearing her soul, especially in regard to sharing the intimacies of her life, whether the subject is carnal love, the ecstasy of love, or the devotional love she has for her children. The other major appeal to her work is the brilliance of her style and language to probe the essence of her subject matter. In this collection, the catalyst for many of the poems focuses on confronting her childhood abuse at

I read this in the late 1980s and thought, "Meh."I recently read Stag's Leap: Poems by Olds and really liked it, so I thought I would reread The Gold Cell and see if I had misjudged it when I read it in my youth. But I still think, "Meh." The language is not nearly as interesting as in Stag's Leap, and the conclusions the poems arrive at are not nearly as striking or surprising.

The first time I read this collection of poems, I was shocked out of my socks, and it felt good. The ways that family torments and saves - sometimes simultaneously - is a recurrent feature. Metaphors that strike home. Sometimes, you might feel after finishing one of her poems about family that your stomach has flipped inside-out and left you holding all the gross, gooey parts in your hands. Then, the moments of self-cleansing, self-clarification, and epiphany fall into place, and you're glad you

I appreciate that Olds uses material from her life to make a beautiful poem. at times I find the sexual language to be a little too much, though. also at times i feel like the language could be a little more original or she could stray from her comfort zone to discover a different structure or tone, but if she did, she wouldn't be her. there are poets who stick to one mode and it works for them and that's what they are known for. and there are poets who differ so greatly in various poems that

I think "The Gold Cell" rests more comfortably in the 3.5 star space, but alas. Is this a great volume? Not to my mind. It is a quite good one, very solid in places, and stunning in a few. The thing is, just as it shines brightly in some moments, it falls entirely dull at others. I found the section on her father (the second?) to be particularly trying to work through. The book is broken into four parts: one outside of the biographical (?) narrator's vantage point; one directed to her father;