SOURCE: A review of The Gold Cell, in The Hudson Review, Vol. XL, No. 3, Autumn, 1987, pp. 517-27.

Hudgins is an American poet, short story writer, critic, and educator. In the following excerpt, he offers a mixed assessment of Olds's The Gold Cell, admiring its powerful imagery and narrative flow, yet faulting its haphazard structure and sensationalistic themes.

Whatever reservations you may have about Sharon Olds's poetry—and I have a number—there's no denying that she's a lot of fun to read. [In The Gold Cell the] poems always open with a great "hook" to grab the reader and the endings are even better—kickers, stunners. But the movement between the opening and the conclusion is usually a headlong rush in which one line collapses into another because the poem is in such a hurry to get to its payoff. The piling up of weak words, especially articles...