Reply #4: Controversial? It...depends on what you mean by "controversial." [View All]

She's written a lot about sexuality, using frank language and graphic detail; she's a feminist, she's (supposedly) a liberal (of the "extreme" pacifist variety) and her poetry is known for what her fans see as its technical originality. She's been an important part of the so-called 'back to the body' movement, especially for women.

She's written one or two poems which I know have been received badly...by those with no taste and less perspective, IMO. A poem from her 1987 collection, "The Gold Cell" entitled "The Pope's Penis" is considered somewhat controversial because, well, uh, it's about Pope John Paul II's penis. (The last time I read an interview in which Olds was asked about it, she said that she is still careful where she reads that piece, but also mentioned during the same interview that she wants to be able to write about any subject.)

Other reasons people dislike Olds' work have to do with her inclusion of references to the Holocaust in early poems in which she describes the childhood experiences of speakers who were neither Holocaust survivors, raised by survivors, or Jewish. (She's also said that she's reexamining these poems and considering rewriting them; I actually think some have been rewritten, but I haven't checked the newer editions of her books to see.) Some of her harshest critics claim that Olds' compositional approach is sloppy, saying her line construction often features poor enjambment and her choice of subject matter isn't "worthy" of poetic examination. One review I read of one of Olds' mature books of poems actually had the gall to declare that what she is doing isn't art.

Occasionally, people have questioned her ethics, because she wrote quite a bit of what she calls "apparently personal poetry," which for a time appeared to some to be about her, not just a fictitious speaker's, extremely detailed experiences in an abusive family, as well as extremely joyous experiences in a healthy one in adulthood. (Even I assumed she was writing about her own life for a few years, despite having been taught to differentiate between a speaker's voice and experiences in a poem and that of the poet who wrote it.) Recently, I read that a couple of decades ago, Olds made a vow never to answer questions about her family publicly, and not to discuss just how closely the poems she has written are connected with her life experience. But I've read a few interviews in which it seems obvious to me that she's admitting she based many of the poems on actual experience, which offended her family members and friends, and she began to regret it early on in her career so she's done her best to try to frame the poetry as being "apparently personal." I think she's quite coy about the question of just how personal the poems are, really, which is one of the only things about her that I don't like.

Oh, and she refused a dinner invitation to the White House in the late summer of 2005, actually writing to tell Laura Bush that she could not "stomach" the thought of "breaking bread" with the Bush family or any members of its administration.