Sex Without Love

Sharon Olds

Who is Sharon Olds?

Sharon Olds was born in 1942 in San Francisco

Sharon Olds was educated at Stanford University and Columbia University

She was the New York State Poet Laureate from 1998 to 2000.

She teaches poetry workshops at New York University

One of the founders of the NYU workshop program at Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island in New York. (Olds)

AWARDSHarriet Monroe PrizeThe National Book Critics Circle

AwardLamont Selection of the Academy of

American PoetsSan Francisco Poetry Center Award She is a Chancellor of the Academy of

American Poets. (Olds)

SHARON OLDS =TABOO

She writes without regard to societal taboos or contradiction, unafraid of delving into the shadowy pathos of her own life. (Wylie)

In 2005, First Lady Laura Bush invited Olds to the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.

Olds responded, declining the invitation in an open letter published in the October 10th, 2005 issue of The Nation. (various)

Sex Without Love Sharon Olds

How do they do it, the ones who make lovewithout love? Beautiful as dancers,

gliding over each other like ice-skatersover the ice, fingers hooked

inside each other's bodies, facesred as steak, wine, wet as the

children at birth whose mothers are going to

give them away. How do they come to thecome to the come to the God come to the

still waters, and not lovethe one who came there with them, light

rising slowly as steam off their joinedskin? These are the true religious,

the purists, the pros, the ones who will notaccept a false Messiah, love the

priest instead of the God.

Sex Without Loveby Sharon Olds

They do notmistake the lover for their own pleasure,they are like great runners: they know

they are alonewith the road surface, the cold, the wind,the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-

vascular health--just factors, like the partner

in the bed, and not the truth, which is thesingle body alone in the universe

against its own best time.

Poetry collections1980 Satan Says University of Pittsburgh

Press 1983 The Dead and the Living, Knopf 1987 The Gold Cell, Knopf 1987 The Matter of This World, Slow

Dancer Press 1991 The Sign of Saturn, Secker & Warburg 1992 The Father , Secker & Warburg 1996 The Wellspring, Knopf 1999 Blood, Tin, Straw Knopf 2002 The Unswept Room, Tandem Library 2004 Strike Sparks: Selected Poems 1980-

2002, Knopf 2008 One Secret Thing, Random House

SHARON OLDS QUOTES

The older I get, the more I feel almost beautiful.

I was very afraid that I wouldn't be able to do this job well. And the time never came back.

Well, one thing I'm really interested in, when I'm writing, is being accurate.

WORKS CITED Olds, Sharon.

"brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/sharon." 2012. BrainyQuote.com. 14 jan 2012 <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/sharon_olds.html >.

—. "Sharon Olds Biography." 2010. Sharon Olds Personal site. 14 jan 2012 <http://www.sharonolds.net>.

various. "Sharon Olds." 14 nov 2011. wikipedia. 14 jan 2012 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharon_Olds#cite_note-0>.

Wylie, Leslie. "Poet reclaims past in work." 8 sept 2008. utdaily beacon. 18 1 2012 <http://utdailybeacon.com/entertainment/2003/sep/8/poet-reclaims-past-in-work/>.