When I first read Sharon Olds in my teens, I didn't like her because I thought her poems were too ugly and about ugly things and they made me feel depressed. Now that I'm older, I appreciate that art doesn't have to make me feel good. Sharon Olds captures unsentimentally precisely the bits of childhood, womanhood, and motherhood that are normally written sentimentally. If her poems are depressing, it's only because they show accurately what was already there in the shapes of women's lives.