The lines rise from the page like outcries, a quality that distinguishes Olds as one of the most accessible contemporary poets of our time. On April 24, Olds reads live at San Diego's Museum of Contemporary Art. When we're writing, I'm not sure that we think of the reader. It's more that we pray not to lie, to get it right, so that if we're writing about a tree, we get that tree and not a petrified log. The honesty in Olds writing process is evoked again when she reads to audiences.
Every poem is a prayer against loneliness.
When I re-read what I've written, that makes three. If I read the poem to someone else that makes four. Poetry and prayer spell loneliness. Although Olds' public readings move from being hilarious to harrowing, she understates her talent as a performer and her extraordinary sense of timing. I don't have a good memory, so I don't know my poems by heart.