The Unswept Room
  • Published: 15 March 2003
  • ISBN: 9780224069786
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 128
  • RRP: $32.99

The Unswept Room

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Jul 2010
Paperback
15 Mar 2003
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'Sharon Old's poems are pure fire in the hands... I love the toughness and humour and brag and tenderness and comletion in her work' - Michael Ondaatje

The Unswept Room is a dazzling collection of poems that project a fresh spirit, a startling energy of language and rhythm, and a moving, elegiac tone shot through with humour. From poems that erupt out of history and childhood to those that embody the nurturing of a new generation of children and the transformative power of marital love, Sharon Olds takes risks, writing boldly of physical and emotional sensations seldom confronted in poetry.

These are poems that strike for the heart, as Sharon Olds captures our imaginations with unexpected word play, 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.
  • Published: 15 March 2003
  • ISBN: 9780224069786
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 128
  • RRP: $32.99
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Also by Sharon Olds

Balladz
Arias
Penguin Modern Poets 3
Odes
Stag's Leap
One Secret Thing
Selected Poems
See all

Praise for The Unswept Room

Her best work exhibits a lyrical acuity which is both purifying and redemptive. She sees description as a means to catharsis, and the end result is impossible to forget - her poetry is remarkable for its candour, its eroticism, and its power to move

David Leavitt

The attention to line, the superbly focused detail, the way her autobiographical material strikes, shines, deepens, spreads: this, surely, is the sound the confessional hordes have been trying to utter since Lowell, the right road that is missed so easily

Glyn Maxwell, Times Literary Supplement

Olds remains too little-known in the UK... readers new to her will be astounded

Kate Clanchy, Independent

If any reading is 'essential', this is it

Carol Rumens