♪♪ In partnership with the UNH library.

This is the New Hampshire Authors series from the Dimond Library at the University of New Hampshire.

♪♪ Sharon Olds lives in New Hampshire and New York City.

She teaches at NYU.

She's written a dozen books of poetry, much acclaimed.

She's received the National Book Critics Circle Award.

The T.S.

Eliot Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for her most recent collection, Stag's Leap.

Much acclaimed.

Writer David Leavitt describes her poetry as remarkable for its candor, its eroticism, and its power to move.

If you already know her work, and I think many of you do, you know exactly what he's talking about.

If you don't know her work, prepare to be astonished.

Welcome to the New Hampshire Authors series, Sharon Olds.

Thank you.

[Applause] Well, Sharon and I talked about this, and we wanted to begin with one of- a favorite poem.

And what I had written on my little dog ear was, I love this one.

So we're going to start with a poem called diagnosis.

Oh, what a what a cute dog ear I love this dog ear!

Okay, I'm glad you like it.

Diagnosis.

By the time I was six months old, she knew something was wrong with me.

I got looks on my face she had not seen on any child in the family, or the extended family or the neighborhood.

My mother took me in to the pediatrician with the kind hands, a doctor with a name like a suit size for a wheel: Hub Long.

My mom did not tell him what she thought in truth, that I was possessed.

It was just these strange looks on my face- he held me and conversed with me, chatting as one does with a baby, and my mother said, She's doing it now!

Look!

She's doing it now!

And the doctor said, What your daughter has is called a sense of humor.

[Laughter] Ohhh, she said, and took me back to the house where that sense would be tested and found to be incurable.

[Laughter] [Applause] Thank you.

Well, without humor, where are we, really?

We're lost.

We’re in big trouble.

Even bigger trouble than we’re in with it.

It sustains us.

And though some of your poetry is very serious and deals with very serious issues like death and divorce and sorrow and grieving, there's always.

And that's what I love about it.

A little bit of humor.

That poem is from, your book called One Secret Thing.

And I thought maybe we could talk a little bit about secrets.

It's my feeling that most writers don't have very many secrets.

We kind of put them out on the page.

I have 1 or 2.

I'll tell you them.

No, not now.

Ohhh!

But secrets make for juicy writing and juicy reading, don't they?

Can you talk about the secret nature of your work?

Sure.

I could say a word about the poem.

That this book was named after.

And it's a poem in which the speaker, who is called I.

And I've stopped pretending that it isn't.

I, for many years, I said, oh, I can't talk about that.

It made me too nervous to seem to be writing just raw autobiography.

And it made me afraid that my poems would be looked at just as like kind of people magazine entries.

Instead of looking at the images or the lines or something like that.

So I kept that.

I tried to keep that off the table.

But this, the poem, the speaker says something to the reader that is, a truth.

It was a particular fear that the speaker had, in the hospice room of her mother.

And, I don't understand the process by which, we, take comfort from making something.

Making a little something, a little message in a bottle, and sending it out to who knows who?

But we hope one person, at least.

So it it just relieved my heart to write that poem, and I realized it was a secret because I wanted to appear to be a nice person.

And I wanted to appear to be a loving person.

And I was, you know, just an ordinary, conflicted person who had all of it in there.

So- It's a wonderful poem.

My dog ear on that one was, I'm so articulate, I wrote, Wow.

[Laughter] I love it.

I love it.

But it's, but it's such a powerful moment where you're with your, you're at the end of your mother's life.

And, her, her lips are dry.

Her mouth is dry.

And so we reach in and put a salve on her gums.

What an intimate, what an intimate moment.

Would you read just the end of it?

I think- Sure.

-we'll know what you're talking about because it's really powerful.

I ran the salve inside the folds along the gums.

Common mercy.

The secret was, how deeply I did not want to touch inside her.

And how much the act was an act of escape.

My last chance to free myself.

So that's not a general mutter- mother daughter poem that is related to a particular mother, and, and daughter.

Yeah.

But I do notice, and when I'm not writing, I long for the time when I'm writing, when for some reason, I believe that if I write it down and it works well enough as a little message in a bottle that someone else might be interested.

I think quite a few people are interested Sharon.

Well, I think we don't generally think that about ourselves or our secrets or our declarations.

So there's a wonderful privacy and of the act of writing the first draft that no one will ever see unless it turns out you really like it and want to type it up and want to send it out.

I love the fact that you say, you know, these are autobiographical poems, that they simply are.

And it just takes away that barrier that with some poets you feel like you're not quite sure.

You think it's autobiographical, but you don't know for sure what parts are not, and write us off and talk about that we take from our experience and from our imagination.

But you, you write quickly after an experience.

Is that right?

Yes.

And I write a lot.

So very little of it do Talk about that, yeah.

Talk about that.

I feel is worth showing to anyone else.

So that's kind of my kind of revision.

Some people work for a long time on a one particular poem, but, yes, I am.

Something moves me.

I mean, one secret thing.

It was that.

That, the truth and that jar and the O of the mouth and the whole, you know, emotional, connection and the goo, the gooiness also.

Since gooiness isn't something that was written a lot about when I was first coming along.

And so I took it as one of my little areas of specialization.

Gooiness, check.

Yeah.

Check.

Is it when you start to write about an experience like that?

Is it like, is it like just a notebook entry?

Do you think this could be a poem?

Are you keeping notes for poems, or is it sort of memoir-ish?

How do you think about those words that you write in your notebooks?

It, it's in the form of a poem in lines.

It's written in lines.

And, what what else was it?

Well, I'm just I'm just thinking.

So it's poetry from the beginning?

It’s a poem.

It's a poem from the beginning.

Just, just a poem in a in a in a grocery store notebook with a with a ballpoint pen -that you may or may not do more with?

Just a poem.

You may or may not write send out into the world No pressure.

It's just a little poem?

Yes right.

Because you think in poems.

And it isn't like a beautiful notebook.

I know people who- wonderful writers who write in beautiful notebooks.

I couldn't do that.

I, then I would be under pressure.

Because you might make a mistake.

Yeah.

Then you'd have to white it out Or, I don't know how, maybe even cut off the edge of the page?

Cut off the edge.

Well, let's move on to another poem.

You know, my thought for this interview was because you're so open in your poetry and it's so autobiographical.

I thought, well, why doesn't Sharon just read for an hour?

But then that wouldn't be an interview, would it?

No.

But you do set, you- We learn so much about you and about the way you see the world.

It's so to me, it seems so, just so honest, so open.

I really connect to that.

I think one of the reasons that I write is that in that concentration, then, similes come into the poem through my writing arm and my pen.

But not, they aren't, they I don't make them up.

They just occur down, you know, from the brain, I guess, into the page.

So that's, not, not strict autobiography that something happens, then from the unconscious.

You're making meaning from it.

You're figuring out how to express it, and Yes, and I never know what, it's going to be.

So that for me is like magic.

And there's a, I don't know, like, in the church I grew up in, you never thought you were okay as a person.

You were not okay as a person, that was just, duh?

There were some kids at school who seemed like maybe they were okay as people.

So there's a, there's, like a special.

It's like a, it's not like a pat on the head of the poem, but it's like, you know, someone that you don't even know gives that line in the poem a little tiny bouquet.

It's just something special that comes in without my will, bringing it in.

And so I feel, happy with that.

Grateful.

And surprised sometimes?

Always, always.

What is this?

Yes.

It’s a little gift.

Yeah.

It’s a little gift.

Yup.

I want to go back to your wonderful sense of humor.

I laughed out loud when I read- There's an introduction to your poem.

Calvinist Parents, and you quote a reviewer who said, sometime during the Truman administration, Sharon Old’s parents tied her to a chair, and she's still writing about it.

[Laughing] Right.

That's very funny, isn't it?

I thought so, and when that was in his review, I felt so happy, using his quote as a epigraph for my poem.

It was just so great, this woman has a good sense of humor, but we all revisit key experiences.

Yes.

I mean, that's there are experiences in our lives that we must return to again and again.

I don't know if we're figuring them out or if the meaning changes over time or what do you- What is that we’re changed by those?

There's certain experiences that really change us.

And I would imagine getting tied to a chair by your parents as a child would be one of those.

I would imagine so too.

[Laughing] I'm backsliding into my childhood.

Childhood?

Yes.

And or maybe gets printed on our brains in some actual physical way.

So we aren't choosing to go back to try to understand it, but there might be some part of us still stuck there.

It just keeps coming up.

It keeps bubbling up.

I think it would be great to get beyond that.

Yeah.

At some point.

Yes, I'm interested in doing that.

Yeah.

Well, it's it's not necessary?

No, no.

It’s not necessary?

We talked about the bop.

We talked about music.

And in your poem 7 AM, you talk about the about music and about being the daughter of a seer, and so, there's so much I think that quite a few of these poems come from The Unswept Room, and I, when we talked about them, I was drawn to that book, particularly because of the mother daughter, daughter relationship.

It speaks to me very powerfully.

So, would you mind reading 7 AM?

I'd be happy to.

You can read all of it or part of it, but I really love the part towards the end where you talk about the mother, but it's not very long.

Right.

Um, yeah I'll read.

Not all of it, but most of it.

7 AM Between the open bathroom door and the frame in that tall, thin slot of air.

Early in the morning, I saw my mother's winter nightie ripple like a witch's.

For a long time, she was hidden behind the wide door.

Then she glided out hunched, miniature, 89 pounds in creamy bluish flannel on her fingers.

The ring she forgot to take off for bed.

She came over to me and puckered up her mouth to be kissed good morning.

This is the woman who hit me.

She was always a great kisser.

Swoon-like, and intense.

She sits in the chair beside me, swings her dainty legs, gazes at me with tender hunger.

I give her a field guide to Western birds and she screams.

She cannot believe she's receiving all these species and in color.

She says she's beginning to understand.

There's the moon and poetry.

And now there are birds and poetry.

There's the moon and birds and poetry and Sharon.

She says again how she did not know it was me she carried.

How could she?

How could she know how proud she would be?

She swings her baby feet and gazes at me.

You have the most beautiful mouth, she says.

It is so womanly and kind and the most magnificent chin.

So strong and yet soft.

And then she shows me what it was like to hit that high sea effortlessly in 1934, flinging up her arms in a victory sign.

Her pupil-less, medicated eyes are milky blue as a seer.

I watch her intently.

My mother is a seer.

I'm a seer’s daughter.

There is music and the moon and birds and poetry.

And my mother.

Oops.

I read the whole thing.

How could you not read the whole thing?

How could you not?

I'm at an age now where my mother is aging and I'm.

And my relationship is changing in some really wonderful ways.

The judgment kind of falls away, and that's.

That's something we seek, isn't it?

Yes.

Yeah.

That's good fortune when that comes.

Oh, it's really, really good fortune.

Yeah.

When she says there's the moon birds, poetry, chair.

It's beautiful.

It's beautiful.

Thank you.

And so talk about music.

Your mother was a singer?

Yes.

And I heard a lot of classical music, in the house when I was a kid.

And then church music at church.

So hymns and, And then I just happened to turn 14 when- Who did Blueberry Hill?

[Soft singing] Fats Domino!

When Blueberry Hill came out.

I mean, what gets better than that?

[Laughing] So that idea of dancing, sort of moderately dirty dancing, you know, just a little dirty dancing.

In junior high to this amazing music.

The music sort of passing through you into gestures.

So, I think very much of a line in poetry and then the way it goes over the end goes back to the beginning.

And then another line those I guess the musical phrasing is something I just love playing with.

And- Well this poem is very musical.

And you hear that, the moon, the music, the moon, the birds and poetry, and my mother, I mean, just that repetition.

That, it defies explanation really.

Just read the poem and we'll just listen, is that okay?

We just like to read the poem and listen.

Okay.

First Hour, is a poem that you did not write immediately after it happened.

It's about birth.

It's about- [Laughing] -being born.

It's about her birth.

It's about your birth.

And it's about identity.

And it's about being human.

And I think it connects so closely to the poem that you just read.

It's you and your mother yet again.

So here's first our oh, another sage comment from the, Thank you.

And it reads backwards the same as forwards.

Yes it does.

Thank you for the wow.

First Hour.

That hour I was most myself.

I had shrugged my mother slowly off.

I lay there taking my first breaths as if the air of the room was blowing me like a bubble.

All I had to do was go out along the line of my gaze and back, out and back on gravity's silk, the pressure of the air, a caress smelling on myself, her creamy blood.

The air was softly touching, my skin and tongue entering me and drawing forth a little sighs I did not know as mine.

I was not afraid.

I lay in the quiet and looked, and did the wordless thought.

My mind was getting its oxygen direct, the rich mix by mouth.

I hated no one.

I gazed and gazed and everything was interesting.

I was free.

Not yet in love.

I did not belong to anyone.

I had drunk no milk yet.

No one had my heart.

I was not very human.

I did not know there was anyone else.

I lay like a god for an hour.

Then they came for me and took me to my mother.

[Sharon chuckles] How did that poem come about?

At what point in your life did you write that poem?

Do you know if you were a mother that- by then?

Oh, sure.

Sure.

Yeah.

But I wonder when we contemplate- 25 years.

-that the moment of our birth.

You know, to contemplate that?

What was I like?

I would think for some reason, maybe the idea of a baby being born rather than the pushing and the baby just resting, this idea of the baby like shrugging the mother off, maybe like a joke, you know, like this kind of like a quiet joke.

Mhm.

And then there's some conflict in the mother daughter poems.

And so to shrug someone off, making a separation And so it might have come from that or just thinking what was it like the first hour?

And then just, it's, it really comes from my unconscious.

When I'm writing it, I'm not I don't know what I'm going to write.

It was a surprise.

Yes.

That's what it was.

Well, to me, it's it's.

And what strikes me about that poem is that everything that happened after that changes us.

I mean, from that moment on, we are becoming.

We are becoming who we we are.

Right.

So there, but to somebody different than that, that that little infant.

Right.

That infant, that pure infant just gazing and gazing and everything is interesting.

It’s peaceful to think of that and what we were talking about before about early experiences, we, that are deeply imprinted and they come back and back, I was a little shocked when I just read it and said, lay like a god.

But I think what it means is just not not subordinate yet to anyone not knowing subordinate-ness.

Mentally healthy?

Yeah.

Complete.

That’s a joke.

Complete in- [Laughing] We've established that you had a sense of humor.

That's been established.

So we agreed to end with a very special poem, because here we are.

April, in New Hampshire.

Look at that.

And Sharon has a poem which is called April, New Hampshire.

April in New Hampshire.

And it's it's it's about Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon.

And Don, of course, has been, a guest on this program, and it's on page- 170.

91- oh is it?

Did I get it wrong?

Of this one, of the selected.

Oh of the selected.

Oh, good.

Yeah.

[Sharon clears throat] I'm- I feel blessed to read this poem here.

And with you, Becky.

And with all of you.

April, New Hampshire, for Jane Kenyon and Donald Hall.

Outside the door, a tiny Narcissus had come up through leaf mold.

In the living room, the old butterscotch collie let me get my hand into the folds of the mammal and knead it.

Inside their room, Don said, This is it.

This is where we lived and died.

To the center of the maple, painted headboard.

Sleigh of beauty.

Sleigh of night.

There was an angel affixed as if bound to it.

With her wings open.

The bed spoke as if to itself.

It sang.

The whole room sang.

And the house and the curve of the hill, like the curve between a throat and a shoulder, sang in praising grief.

And the ground almost rang, hollowed out bell waiting for its tongue to be lowered in.

At the grave site next to the big, smoothed, beveled felled oak home, like the bowl of a druid do ere Inside it what comes not close to being like who she was.

He stood beside in a long silence, minutes like the seething harness creaking when the water of a full watering is feeding down into the ground.

And he looked at us at each one, and he seemed not just a person seeing people.

He looked almost to another species, an eagle gazing at eagles.

Fierce, intent, wordless eyelid-less seeing each one, seeing deep into each, miles, years.

He seemed to be Jane, looking at us for the last time on Earth.

♪♪ What could be more appropriate?

I wanted to get these poems out, and it's- Thank you so much for delivering them with such grace.

So beautifully read.

So thank you Sharon Old, for coming to Dimond Library.

We really appreciate it.

Me too, me too.

Thank you, thank you.

[Applause] ♪♪