Books by Toby Olson

Death Sentences is Toby Olson's first major collection since Darklight (2007), and many of the poems are addressed to his wife, Miriam, who died in 2014. Many of the other poems stand as celebrations of what is observed, without metaphor or other literary devices intervening. The four series are highly structured experiments with the sentence.

In 2014, Miriam Olson died at the age 80, and after nearly 50 years of marriage. She had suffered from Alzheimer's for some years and Toby became her principal carer. This is a memoir of that period, a story of love and frustration, remembering and forgetting. Miriam is The Other Woman of the title - a woman other than the one she once was.