Late Bloomer

"I was a late bloomer. But anyone who blooms at all, ever, is very lucky...Many lives don't allow that, the good fortune of being able to work at it, and try, and keep trying."

-- Poet Sharon Olds, who published her first book of poems when she was 37 years old. In 2005, she wrote an open letter to Laura Bush declining an invitation to read from her work at the National Book Festival in protest of the Iraq War. Her poem "I Go Back to May 1937" opens the recent movie Into the Wild.