Mary Oliver's poems arrive on the wings of her attention. She has harvested the delights of long looking. Reading her work, one feels her high regard for resting in the moment and being totally present. Oliver weaves a world of haunting sights and sounds from the natural world. The 40 poems and prose poems here unfurl for us the beauties we take for granted or just plain overlook.
In "Moonlight" Mary Oliver reveals the approach she has used for everything else in this collection: "Take care you don't know anything in this world / too quickly or easily. Everything / is also a mystery, and has its own secret aura in the moonlight, / its private song." Yes, well put, indeed. Whether writing of dolphins, bees, snakes, ravens, roses, larks, loons, or clams, this Pulitzer Prize-winning poet helps us marvel at the wonders around us.
In "Stones" Oliver imagines how some have traveled on a glacier's tongue and others were born of fire and have red stars inside their bodies. She pays tribute: "Each one is a slow-wheeler. / Each one is a tiny church, locked up tight." Staying in this worshipful mood, she listens to the sounds of a mockingbird and calls them a sweet prayer ("Mockingbird"). Miracles abound here and there in nature, and Oliver is an acolyte of astonishment. Check out just what this means in "Last Night The Rain Spoke To Me" and "At Twilight An Angel." One senses the poet's love of solitude in her tribute to "Clam."
Savoring these poems, we are buoyed up by Oliver's respect for the inexplicable. In a world filled to the brim with so many explanations, it is soothing to enter these pages where mystery is hallowed. We also appreciate her poet's humility in the presence of marvels. Her relinquishment of self results in our replenishment of spirit.
