The Wellspring: Poems

The theme of Sharon Olds' fifth volume of poetry, The Wellspring is family and the sexual and sensual nature of the creation and sustenance of life--most often her own. From a time in her mother's life that preceded her own birth ("half of me/was deep in her body, dyed egg") to her father's testicles ("my brothers/and sisters are there, swimming by the cinerous/millions") to her son (who "waited inside me so many years/egg in my side before I was born"), her place in the reproductive life of her family is paramount. Even when the ostensible subject of a poem is as public as a campus antiwar demonstration, as in "May 1968," the real topic is creation and procreation: "The mounted police moved, near us/while we sang ... /if my period did not come tonight/I was pregnant."