{"product_id":"the-unswept-room-isbn-9780375709982","title":"The Unswept Room","description":"\u003cb\u003eFrom the Pulitzer Prize and T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry winner—a stunning collection of poems about history, childhood, nurturing a new generation of children, and the transformative power of marital love. \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith poems that project a fresh spirit, a startling energy of language and counterpoint, and a moving, elegiac tone shot through with humor, Sharon Olds takes risks, writing boldly of physical, emotional, and spiritual sensations that are seldom the stuff of poetry. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThese are poems that strike for the heart, as Olds captures our imagination with unexpected wordplay, sprung rhythms, and the disquieting revelations of ordinary life. Writing at the peak of her powers, this greatly admired poet gives us her finest collection.SHARON OLDS was born in 1942 in San Francisco and educated at Stanford University   and Columbia University. Her previous books are \u003ci\u003eSatan Says\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Dead and the Living\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e The Gold Cell\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Wellspring\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Father\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eBlood, Tin, Straw\u003c\/i\u003e. She was the New   York State Poet Laureate from 1998 to 2000. She teaches poetry workshops in the Graduate   Creative Writing Program at New York University and was one of the founders of the   NYU workshop program at Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island in New York. Her work   has received the Harriet Monroe Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the   Lamont Selection of the Academy of American Poets, and the San Francisco Poetry Center   Award. She lives in New York City.\u003cb\u003eThe Shyness\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen, when we were joined, I became\u003cbr\u003eshyer.  I became completed, joyful,\u003cbr\u003eand shyer.  I may have shone more, reflected\u003cbr\u003emore, and from deep inside there rose\u003cbr\u003esome glow passing steadily through me, but I was not\u003cbr\u003eplaying, now, I felt a little like someone\u003cbr\u003esmall, in a raftered church, or in \u003cbr\u003ea cathedral, the vaulted spaces of the body\u003cbr\u003elike a sacred woods.  I was quiet when my throat was not\u003cbr\u003emaking those iron, orbital, rusted,\u003cbr\u003ecoming noises at the hinge of matter and\u003cbr\u003ewhatever is not matter.  He takes me into \u003cbr\u003eending after ending like another world at the\u003cbr\u003ecenter of this one, and then, if he begins to\u003cbr\u003eend when I am resting I feel awe, I almost feel\u003cbr\u003efear, sometimes for a moment I feel\u003cbr\u003eI should not move, or make a sound, as\u003cbr\u003eif he is alone, now,\u003cbr\u003ehowling in the wilderness,\u003cbr\u003eand yet I know we are in this place\u003cbr\u003etogether.  I thought, now is the moment\u003cbr\u003eI could become more loving, and my hands moved shyly\u003cbr\u003eover him, secret as heaven,\u003cbr\u003eand my mouth spoke, and in my beloved’s\u003cbr\u003evoice, by the bones of my head, the fields\u003cbr\u003egroaned, and then I joined him again,\u003cbr\u003enot shy, not bold, released, entering\u003cbr\u003ethe true home, where the trees bend down along the\u003cbr\u003eground and yet stand, then we lay together\u003cbr\u003epanting, as if saved from some disaster, and for ceaseless\u003cbr\u003einstants, it came to pass what I have\u003cbr\u003eheard about, it came to me\u003cbr\u003ethat I did not know I was separate\u003cbr\u003efrom this man, I did not know I was lonely.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBible Study: 71 b.c.e.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAfter Marcus Licinius Crassus\u003cbr\u003edefeated the army of Spartacus,\u003cbr\u003ehe crucified 6,000 men.\u003cbr\u003eThat is what the records say,\u003cbr\u003eas if he drove in the 18,000\u003cbr\u003enails himself.  I wonder how\u003cbr\u003ehe felt, that day, if he went outside\u003cbr\u003eamong them, if he walked that human\u003cbr\u003ewoods.  I think he stayed in his tent\u003cbr\u003eand drank, and maybe copulated,\u003cbr\u003ehearing the singing being done for him,\u003cbr\u003ethe woodwind-tuning he was doing at one\u003cbr\u003eremove, to the six-thousandth power.\u003cbr\u003eAnd maybe he looked out, sometimes,\u003cbr\u003eto see the rows of instruments,\u003cbr\u003ehis orchard, the earth bristling with it\u003cbr\u003eas if a patch in his brain had itched\u003cbr\u003eand this was his way of scratching it\u003cbr\u003edirectly.  Maybe it gave him pleasure,\u003cbr\u003eand a sense of balance, as if he had suffered,\u003cbr\u003eand now had found redress for it,\u003cbr\u003eand voice for it.  I speak as a monster,\u003cbr\u003esomeone who this hour has thought at length\u003cbr\u003eabout Crassus, his ecstasy of feeling\u003cbr\u003enothing while so much is being\u003cbr\u003efelt, his hot lightness of spirit\u003cbr\u003ein being free to walk around\u003cbr\u003ewhile others are nailed above the earth.\u003cbr\u003eIt may have been the happiest day\u003cbr\u003eof his life.  If he had suddenly cut\u003cbr\u003ehis hand on a wineglass, I doubt he would\u003cbr\u003ehave woken up to what he was doing.\u003cbr\u003eIt is frightening to think of him suddenly\u003cbr\u003eseeing what he was, to think of him running\u003cbr\u003eoutside, to try to take them down,\u003cbr\u003eone man to save 6,000.\u003cbr\u003eIf he could have lowered one,\u003cbr\u003eand seen the eyes when the level of pain\u003cbr\u003edropped like a sudden soaring into pleasure,\u003cbr\u003ewouldn't that have opened in him\u003cbr\u003ethe wild terror of understanding\u003cbr\u003ethe other?  But then he would have had\u003cbr\u003e5,999\u003cbr\u003eto go.  Probably it almost never\u003cbr\u003ehappens, that a Marcus Crassus\u003cbr\u003ewakes.  I think he dozed, and was roused\u003cbr\u003eto his living dream, lifted the flap\u003cbr\u003eand slowly looked out, at the rustling, creaking\u003cbr\u003eliving field-his, like an external\u003cbr\u003eorgan, a heart.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSunday Night\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen the family would go to a restaurant,\u003cbr\u003emy father would put his hand up a waitress's\u003cbr\u003eskirt if he could-hand, wrist,\u003cbr\u003eforearm.  Suddenly, you couldn't see\u003cbr\u003ehis elbow, just the upper arm.\u003cbr\u003eHis teeth were wet, the whites of his eyes\u003cbr\u003ewet, a man with a stump of an arm,\u003cbr\u003eas if he had reached behind the night.\u003cbr\u003eIt was always the right arm, he wasn't\u003cbr\u003efooling.  Places we had been before,\u003cbr\u003eno one would serve us, unless there was a young\u003cbr\u003eunwarned woman, and I never warned her.\u003cbr\u003eWooop!  he would go, as if we were having\u003cbr\u003efun together.  Sometimes, now,\u003cbr\u003eI remember it as if he had had his\u003cbr\u003earm in up to his shoulder, his arm\u003cbr\u003eto its pit in the mother, he laughed with teary\u003cbr\u003eeyes, as if he was weeping with relief.\u003cbr\u003eHis other arm would be lying on the table-\u003cbr\u003ehe liked to keep it motionless, to\u003cbr\u003eimprove the joke, ventriloquist\u003cbr\u003ewith his arm up the dummy, his own shriek\u003cbr\u003ecoming out of her mouth.  I wish I had stuck\u003cbr\u003ea fork in that arm, driven the tines\u003cbr\u003edeep, heard the squeak of muscle,\u003cbr\u003efelt the skid on bone.  I may have\u003cbr\u003emet, since then, someone related\u003cbr\u003eto one of the women at the True Blue\u003cbr\u003eor at the Hick'ry Pit.  Sometimes\u003cbr\u003eI imagine my way back into the skirts\u003cbr\u003eof the women my father hurt, those bells of\u003cbr\u003etwilight, those sacred tented woods.\u003cbr\u003eI want to sweep, tidy, stack-\u003cbr\u003ewhatever I can do, clean the stable\u003cbr\u003eof my father's mind.  Maybe undirty\u003cbr\u003emy own, come to see the whole body\u003cbr\u003eas blameless and lovely.  I want to work off\u003cbr\u003emy father's and my sins, stand\u003cbr\u003ebeneath the night sky with the full moon\u003cbr\u003eglowing, knowing I am under the dome\u003cbr\u003eof a woman who forgives me.","brand":"Knopf","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302321803493,"sku":"NP9780375709982","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375709982.jpg?v=1767742015","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-unswept-room-isbn-9780375709982","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}