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Poet Sharon Olds on Her Intense an Personal Work

Olds writes passionately about her childhood with abusive and alcoholic parents, and her own experiences as a mother and a wife. Suicide attempts in New York, and encounters on the subway also provide inspiration for her work. Sharon Olds is the recipient of the 1985 National Book Critics Circle Award for her collection titled The Dead and the Living. (Rebroadcast)

11:54
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Other segments from the episode on May 19, 1995

Fresh Air with Terry Gross, May 19, 1995: Interview with Robert Haas; Interview with Sharon Olds; Interview with W.S. Merwin; Commentary on an aging mother.
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09:19

New Poet Laureate Robert Haas

This year, The U.S. Library Congress named Hass has the American Poet Laureate. Two collections of his work were published last year, Selected Poems 1954-1986, and Provinces 1987-1991. He translated, with poet Robert Pinsky, Czeslaw Milosz's The Separate Notebooks. We replay part of Terry's conversation with him from 1989 (Rebroadcast).

Interview
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12:42

Poet and Translator W.S. Merwin

Merwin won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1970 work, The Carriers of Ladders. His books include The Song of Roland, The Compass Flower, Miner's Pale Children, Houses and Travellers, and The Rain in the Trees. Many of his poems concern the beauty of the natural world and the consequences of man's desecration of it. (Rebroadcast)

Interview

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09:29

Poet Sharon Olds

Olds' writing is confessional and personal, but she says her work is not necessarily autobiographical. She wonders why readers have the desire to separate truth from invention in her work -- and the work of other women poets in particular.

Interview
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27:13

Poet Sharon Olds Discusses Her Life and Reads Some of Her Poetry.

Poet Sharon Olds. She writes passionate and intensely personal poems about her childhood with abusive and alcoholic parents, and her own experiences as a mother and a wife. Suicide attempts in New York, and encounters on the subway also provide inspiration for her work. Sharon Olds is the recipient of the 1985 National Book Critics Circle Award for her collection titled The Dead and the Living.

Interview

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