First-Person Singular

The poet Sharon Olds completely blew my mind this afternoon. She was interviewed by Hal Wake, the Festival artistic director. Their conversation ranged across writing and life, but it was something about Olds' presence, her humility and courage, which made you feel she was really letting you in. The audience, as you can imagine, was poet-heavy, and come of the questions dealt with process and craft. As a non-poet, I tend to find it amazing that anyone can write a poem at all (I have the same feeling sometimes when I'm watching baseball. Who are these people who can run, run, run, then catch the ball, then stop and throw the ball in such a way that someone can catch it?). Olds revealed, amazingly, that only one in about ten poems she writes ever sees the light of day. This may explain what seems to be her all-home-run books: the less-divine stuff has been weeded out.

Olds runs a fascinating writing workshop called the Hospital Project. Olds and her colleagues and students at NYU's graduate creative writing school spend time in hospitals helping people write poetry. Many of these hospital poets are not going to live long, and their words and thoughts must be a tremendous comfort to their families when they are gone; some of the poets are non-speaking, non-moving patients in paralytic wards who write via alphabet charts held by the grad student or teacher, raising their eyes to signal the letters they want to use.

I can't quite explain what it was about Olds that so captivated the audience, but I have rarely left a literary event feeling as good as I do right now. Maybe it was the love Olds seemed to have for her students, and the way she believes in poetry, not, as she explained in answer to a question, as an ethical act, but as a privilege. And we were truly privileged to spend the afternoon with her.