
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry & the TS Eliot Poetry Prize Stag's Leap Sharon Olds' stunningly poignant new sequence of poems tells the story of a divorce embracing strands of love sex sorrow memory & new freedom In this wise & intimate telling
- which carries us through the seasons when her marriage was ending
- Sharon Olds opens her heart to the reader sharing the feeling of invisibility that comes when we are no longer standing in love's sight; the surprising physical passion that still exists between a couple during parting; the loss of everything from her husband's smile to the set of his hip Olds is naked before us curious & brave & even generous toward the man who was her mate for thirty years & now loves another woman As she writes in the remarkable title poem ' When anyone escapes my heart leaps up Even when it's I who am escaped from I am half on the side of the leaver' Olds' propulsive poetic line & the magic of her imagery are as lively as ever & there is a new range to the music
- sometimes headlong sometimes contemplative & deep Her unsparing approach to both pain & love makes this one of the finest most powerful books of poetry Olds has yet given us