Balladz

GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE FINALIST

“A commanding poet . . . This substantial gathering is funny, furious, discomfiting, ravishing, mythic, and sorrowful . . . As always, Olds describes herself and her loved ones in startlingly microscopic detail, finding beauty in the ravages of age and even death . . . Passionately precise, Olds unites the primordial with the scientific, the mundane with the chthonic, flesh with spirit.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist
 
“A gorgeous, introspective collection. Beginning with a series of quarantine poems, she also meditates on her own white privilege, on her mother’s abuse, and on aging, among other subjects. At once personal and political, the book perfectly encapsulates this confounding time.” —Columbia Magazine
 
“Ranging from quarantine to issues of whiteness, the Pulitzer and T.S. Eliot Prize–winning Olds continues her laserlike attentiveness to the life around her life as she crisscrosses childhood, young adulthood, and contemporary times, sometimes in the style of Emily Dickinson.” —Library Journal