“Sometime during the Truman
Administration, Sharon Olds’s
parents tied her to a chair, and
she is still writing about it.”
(review in The New Criterion)
“My father was a gentleman, and he
expected us to be gentlemen. If we
did not observe the niceties, he
whopped us with his belt. He had a
strong arm, and boy did we feel it.”
(Prescott Sheldon Bush,
brother to a president
and uncle to another)
They put a roof over our heads.
Each tile was a slab of clay laid over a
thigh and bent until it dried bent,
so the edge of the roof had a broken look,
as if a lot of crockery had been
thrown down, onto the home—
a dump for heaven’s cheap earthenware.
Along the eaves, the arches in a row
were like the Colosseum entrances
where a lion might appear, or an eight-foot armored
being with the painted face