"If I wrote in a sonnet form, I would be distorting. Or if I had some great new idea for line breaks and I used it in a poem, but it's really not right for that poem, but I wanted it, that would be distorting"
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Olds is arguing for an ethics of form: the poem should not be dressed up to satisfy the poet's ego. Coming from a writer known for blunt, bodily candor and family material that can feel almost reportorial, the line reads like a refusal of virtuosity for its own sake. Sonnet, line-break “innovation,” the whole showroom of technique becomes suspect when it’s applied as a template rather than discovered as the necessary shape of a particular experience.
The word “distorting” is doing heavy work. It frames craft as a kind of moral pressure - the moment you force a lived fact into a prestigious container (the sonnet) or a fashionable trick (the clever break), you risk lying. Olds isn’t anti-form so much as anti-appropriation: form should be earned, not imposed. That’s a quiet rebuke to workshop culture and literary scene incentives, where novelty and “mastery” can become badges. She’s naming how easily a poet can start writing to be seen as a poet, rather than to see.
Subtextually, there’s also a defense of plainness that’s not simple at all. Olds’s poems often rely on intensity, pacing, and revelation more than ornament; the stance here protects that aesthetic from accusations of being uncrafted. She’s insisting that restraint is a choice, and that the most radical technique might be accuracy - letting the poem find its own engineering, even if it looks unglamorous on the page.
The word “distorting” is doing heavy work. It frames craft as a kind of moral pressure - the moment you force a lived fact into a prestigious container (the sonnet) or a fashionable trick (the clever break), you risk lying. Olds isn’t anti-form so much as anti-appropriation: form should be earned, not imposed. That’s a quiet rebuke to workshop culture and literary scene incentives, where novelty and “mastery” can become badges. She’s naming how easily a poet can start writing to be seen as a poet, rather than to see.
Subtextually, there’s also a defense of plainness that’s not simple at all. Olds’s poems often rely on intensity, pacing, and revelation more than ornament; the stance here protects that aesthetic from accusations of being uncrafted. She’s insisting that restraint is a choice, and that the most radical technique might be accuracy - letting the poem find its own engineering, even if it looks unglamorous on the page.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
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