SmarterLilac's Reviews > Satan Says

I've resisted putting my reviews of Sharon Olds' poems up on the Internet, mainly because I haven't had time to give these deep meditations proper appreciation. The other reason is that in these books there are invariably one or two poems that make me cry in the ugliest way imaginable, and I've haven't wanted to have that experience lately.

I've read most of her books more than ten times a piece, so I was surprised that when I sat down to reread Satan Says, the Rosetta Stone of Olds' body of work, what I was seeing, sadly for the first time, were subtle details my brain had skipped right over in the years before. And I thought of myself as an Olds' expert! It really is the little things that make give a poem its impact. In "The Indispensability of the Eyes," Olds writes, "Every year/my glasses got stronger. What went on at home/I couldn't bear to see." I can't recall noticing this line in my (many) rereadings of Olds' books, yet it seems to, like most of the poems here, serve a vital place in the piece as a whole in a mere two lines and fifteen words.

I can't agree that Satan Says is Olds best book--that honor belongs to the magnificent The Gold Cell--but it's shockingly good, and now I know, better than I have given it credit for: a woman breaking out of the restrictions of her life to bring her art to the collective, without guilt, self-blame, or denial.