**A searing sequence of poems about a daughter's vision of a father's
illness and death--by the Pulitzer Prize and T. S. Eliot Prize for
Poetry winner, called "a poet for these times, a powerful woman who
won't back down" (San Francisco Chronicle).
**
The Father chronicles these events in a connected narrative, from the
onset of the illness to reflections in the years after the death. The
book is, most of all, a series of acts of understanding. The poems are
impelled by a passion to know, and a freedom to follow wherever the
truth may lead. The book goes into area of feeling and experience rarely
entered in poetry.
The ebullient language, the startling, far-reaching images, the sense of
extraordinary 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 radiance and daring that have always
distinguished Sharon Old's work find here their most powerful
expression.