Word Garden Word List--Sharon Olds

 

Sharon Olds

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's slightly late in the day Word Garden Word List. Our source this week is "The Dead and the Living" a poetry collection by Sharon Olds. 

I don't know why but I had a devil of a time finding an image of the cover for this book!

I became interested in her work recently when someone told me about her poem "Sex Without Love" which asks how people do it, as I have sometimes asked myself. It's a foreign concept to me. And so I bought this collection. 

Sharon Olds' first collection had the catchy title "Satan Says" and our source book was her second. She won a Pulitzer for her collection "Stag's Leap" in 2013.While finding out a few details about her, I came across this: when she first sent her poetry to a literary magazine, she received this reply: "This is a literary magazine. If you want to write about this sort of subject, may we suggest Ladies' Home Journal. The true subjects of poetry are... male subjects, not your children." I sincerely hope that the magazine in question suffered a steep decline in circulation due to a shortage of stuffy, sexist, blinkered subscribers. 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others if able to do so, and then sit back and bask in the glow of a creative task well completed! This prompt remains open through next Saturday.

And now, your List:

ambulance

asleep

black

bricks

cactus

can-opener

dolls

elegant

glittering

gloves

halo

hospital

ivy

peeled

pool

red

salty

sparrows

tulips

whole