“When we lived together, the silence in the home / was denser than the silence would be after he left.” Sharon Olds’s newest collection of poetry, Stag’s Leap (Knopf), reads like a novel with an empathetic heroine in a situation many may face: the finale of a long marriage. How Olds springs back from being a “Left Wife” after 30 years is what the “Leap” of the title is really about (even though the Stag is obviously the husband). With metaphorical jolts and astonishing candor, she lands in freedom, even as she acknowledges, “I am half on the side of the leaver.” A bareback ride through the inner life of a prizewinning poet every woman should know. 

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Next: Book Review: 'The Round House' by Louise Erdrich

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