One Secret Thing

A powerful collection of poems about family and grief—by the Pulitzer Prize and T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry winner, called "a poet for these times, a powerful woman who won’t back down" (San Francisco Chronicle).

Sharon Olds completes her cycle of family poems in a book at once intense and harmonic, playful with language, and rich with a new self-awareness and sense of irony.

The opening poem, with its sequence of fearsome images of war, serves as a prelude to poems of home in which humor, anger, and compassion sing together with lyric energy—sometimes comic, sometimes filled with a kind of unblinking forgiveness. These songs of joy and danger—public and private—illuminate one another. As the book unfolds, the portrait of the mother goes through a moving revisioning, leading us to a final series of elegies of hard-won mourning. One Secret Thing is charged throughout with Sharon Olds’s characteristic passion, imagination, and poetic power.

The doctor on the phone was young, maybe on his
first rotation in the emergency room.
On the ancient boarding-school radio,
in the attic hall, the announcer had given my
boyfriend’s name as one of two
brought to the hospital after the sunrise
service, the egg-hunt, the crash—one of them
critical, one of them dead. I was looking at the
stairwell banisters, at their lathing,
the necks and knobs like joints and bones,
the varnish here thicker here thinner—I had said
Which one of them died, and now the world was
an ant’s world: the huge crumb of each
second thrown, somehow, up onto
my back, and the young, tired voice
said my fresh love’s name.

from “Easter 1960”

Standard and Primary covers are widely available through general retailers. They often have higher print runs and can be cheaper, especially during sales.

In contrast, Direct Market (DM) and variant covers are primarily sold in comic shops. DM editions tend to have more limited availability and may be more valuable to collectors.

The main differences lie in artwork style, availability, price, and collector appeal. Ultimately, the choice between standard and variant covers depends on personal preference, budget, and individual collecting goals.

Comic book enthusiasts have various formats to choose from when collecting their favorite stories.
Here's a brief overview of the main types:

Omnibus

• Large, hardcover collections
• Usually contain complete runs or extensive story arcs
• Typically 800-1000+ pages
• Higher price point, often €100-€150

Oversized Hardcover (OHC)

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• Collect shorter runs or story arcs
• Usually 300-600 pages
• Priced between €30-€50

Hardcover (HC)

• Standard-sized hardcover books
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• Similar dimensions to single issues, but with a hard cover
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Trade Paperback (TP)

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• Most affordable option, typically €15-€25

Other Formats

• Absolute Editions: Oversized, deluxe hardcovers (mainly DC Comics)
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The choice between these formats often depends on personal preference, budget, and collecting goals. Omnibus and OHC editions offer larger artwork and more content but at a higher price, while TPs provide a more affordable way to collect complete story arcs