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Sharon Olds was born in San Francisco on November 19, 1942. She was raised as a Calvinist. She earned a B.A. at Stanford University and a Ph.D. at Columbia University. (1) She enjoys testing the limits of what poets can write about saying that "poets are like steam valves, where ordinary feelings of ordinary people can escape and be shown." She has taught in many places including Goldwater Hospital for severely disable people and is currently teaching at New York University. (3b)

Going to her Church shaped the way that she writes her poetry. Every morning she heard "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and verses from Psalms. In these, each line had four beats and each stanza is made up of four lines.This is the form that she used early on in her writing and it is still the underlying rythym in many of her works. (4b)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsbAba0qLHI

When she first started writing, she had no plan of showing her work to anyone. After a while her mind changed and she started to work under differnt pseudonyms. Later she began taking credit for her work, and giving public readings. (4b)

Over her career, she has earned many awards including the San Francisco Poetry Center Award, the Lamont Poetry Prize, and National Books Critict Circle Award, and the T. S. Eliot Prize.