The poetry of divorce

The Community of Writers at Squaw Valley returns to the Crocker Art Museum's Setzer Foundation Auditorium for its annual Poetry Benefit Reading at 7 p.m. on Friday, June 21.

The five featured poets include writers with various accolades and accomplishments—there's a former U.S. poet laureate, Pulitzer Prize winners, a winner of the Holmes National Poetry Prize and a T.S. Eliot Prize winner.

Sharon Olds (pictured), the recipient for that latter honor, was also awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her 2012 collection, Stag's Leap (Knopf, $16.95). The title poem in that collection exemplifies Olds' intimate narrative style.

Olds also appeared at Squaw Valley's 2012 poetry benefit where she read from a piece that traced the disintegration of a marriage. She's also known for her highly personal, sometimes controversial, poems in books such as the 1984 volume The Dead and the Living (Knopf, $18), a National Book Critics Circle Award winner.

Olds will be joined by former U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Hass, whose recent book of prose, What Light Can Do: Essays on Art, Imagination, and the Natural World (Ecco, $29.99), was a finalist for the 2013 Northern California Book Awards. Rounding out the reading are 2012 Pulitzer Prize finalist and 1982 recipient, Galway Kinnell; Brenda Hillman, the Olivia Filippi Professor of Poetry at Saint Mary's College of California; and poet and critic Evie Shockley.

All proceeds benefit financial aid and scholarships for Squaw Valley's poetry program. $22 general admission, $16 students; 216 O Street, www.squawvalleywriters.org/benefit.html.