Stag's Leap (by Sharon Olds)

One of the RHC categories is "a collection of poetry published since 2014."

Originally I'd selected Dome of the Hidden Pavilion, a collection of James Tate's from 2015. I got through about half of it and gave up. I love James Tate's work, but this felt both formulaic (surreal scenario with surreal dialogue in a prose poem paragraph) and padded (it felt endless). Most of the poems are also more cerebral than emotional.

In contrast, Stag's Leap grabbed me by the heart immediately. It's a collection written about her divorce, which her husband initiated by leaving her for a colleague after 30 years of marriage. It captures the bond of marriage so beautifully that I've spent the past couple of days clinging to Ian and saying you can never divorce me! Divorce hurts so much and our love is too beautiful.  

Here's an excerpt from he title poem:

Stag’s Leap

Then the drawing on the label of our favorite red wine
looks like my husband, casting himself off a
cliff in his fervor to get free of me.
His fur is rough and cozy, his face
placid, tranced, ruminant,
the bough of each furculum reaches back
to his haunches, each tine of it grows straight up
and branches, like a model of his brain, archaic,
unwieldy. He bears its bony tray
level as he soars from the precipice edge,
dreamy. When anyone escapes, my heart
leaps up. Even when it’s I who am escaped from,
I am half on the side of the leaver.

As I'm looking this up, I notice Stag's Leap was written in 2012 and was awarded the Pulitzer in 2013 so it actually doesn't qualify for the RHC. But I loved it nonetheless and am grateful I read it.