2013 (my review can be found on the LibraryThing page linked)
http://www.librarything.com/topic/154187#4212695

Sharon Olds' Stag's Leap is a book of poems about the author's divorce. It received much acclaim, including winning the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 2013.

But I have to say that it is by far the weakest book in her oeuvre. Satan Says, her first book, was like a series of firecrackers, every poem a veritable explosion. In this book, almost every poem is a dud. The poems are leaden; they lack depth and range. She reveals an amount of self-absorption that is downright embarrassing. The poems say that both she and her friends think she has been maudlin too long. I can't agree more. There are phrases and even whole poems that possess power and are worth reading, but they are few and far between.

The fact that this was deemed the best book of poems by the Pulitzer committee in 2013 is a reflection that politics plays more of a hand than quality in literary awards. ( )

Sharon Olds' Stag's Leap is a book of poems about the author's divorce. It received much acclaim, including winning the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 2013.

But I have to say that it is by far the weakest book in her oeuvre. Satan Says, her first book, was like a series of firecrackers, every poem a veritable explosion. In this book, almost every poem is a dud. The poems are leaden; they lack depth and range. She reveals an amount of self-absorption that is downright embarrassing. The poems say that both she and her friends think she has been maudlin too long. I can't agree more. There are phrases and even whole poems that possess power and are worth reading, but they are few and far between.

The fact that this was deemed the best book of poems by the Pulitzer committee in 2013 is a reflection that politics plays more of a hand than quality in literary awards. ( )

This slim volume of poetry won a Pulitzer Prize. I located it on a list of poetry everyone should read. I did not enjoy it. The volume focuses on her divorce and the feelings surrounding it. The author definitely took out her feelings through her writing. It was "TMI" (too much information). Although Olds' writing style excelled, the topic left me cold. ( )

Stag's Leap is a fantastic collection of poetry. I've always admired her writing, her bravery, her honesty, and her wisdom. But I found her ability, in this collection, to look with honesty and compassion at the painful dissolution of her thirty year marriage, and its aftermath, staggering.

It won the Pulitzer five years ago, and it deserves it.

Here are a couple of examples from it.

The Flurry

When we talk about when to tell the kids,
we are so together, so concentrated.
I mutter, “I feel like a killer.” “I’m
the killer”—taking my wrist—he says,
holding it. He is sitting on the couch,
the old indigo chintz around him,
rich as a night sea with jellies,
I am sitting on the floor. I look up at him,
as if within some chamber of matedness,
some dust I carry around me. Tonight,
to breathe its Magellanic field is less
painful, maybe because he is drinking
a wine grown where I was born—fog,
eucalyptus, sempervirens—and I’m
sharing the glass with him. “Don’t catch
my cold,” he says, “—oh that’s right, you want
to catch my cold.” I should not have told him that,
I tell him I will try to fall out of
love with him, but I feel I will love him
all my life. He says he loves me
as the mother of our children, and new troupes
of tears mount to the acrobat platforms
of my ducts and do their burning leaps.
Some of them jump straight sideways, and, for a
moment, I imagine a flurry
of tears like a whirra of knives thrown
at a figure, to outline it—a heart’s spurt
of rage. It glitters, in my vision, I nod
to it, it is my hope.

****

An ending excerpt from "Last Look":

and I saw, again, how blessed my life has been,
first, to be able to love,
then, to have the parting now behind me,
and not to have lost him when the kids were young,
and the kids now not at all to have lost him,
and not to have lost him when he loved me, and not to have
lost someone who could have loved me for life. ( )