New and Selected Poems, Volume Two

I've wanted to write a review of this book for a long time, but I've always resisted. After all, I thought, what can I add to what so many people have said about Mary Oliver and her wonderful poems? Well, as it turns out, there is something. No one, of all the readers who have written in, has singled out my favorite poem. I won't say it's better than anyone else's favorite; we all have our own special pathways to the heart, and different poems reach different people. But I've carried a clipping of it with me for years, since it appeared in an earlier collection, and I'm thrilled to see again in this new one. If only one person decides to read this book on the basis of this poem, it will be worth it for me. The poem is called "Late Spring Evening": What can we say to these junebugson the rebound from the screens we raiseand swooning heavily to the porch floor?Do we dare ask them their reasonswhen we know they'll never ask ours?Let's be content to guess, but not insist,it's something to do with porchlights.Unconsciousnessmust be a consolation to them, batted by the cat,but should we be consoled by the unsought blessing of their presence?Fly from the light, save yourselves, we'll tell them,grateful they'll never heed us.

In a recent interview, poet Jane Hirshfield said: "As a flint holds the spark, each good poem holds a hidden bit of life--knowledge that its reading releases in us and we in it. Poetry returns me to the sense of the infinite possibility that dwells in each particular thing, and also returns me to the flavor and scent and textures of the particular, where the infinite must reside. But Blake put this much better: 'To see a world in a grain of sand/ And a heaven in a wildflower.' Each good poem reopens that gate, reminds us how such seeing is done" ("The Bloomsbury Review," July/August 2001). Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Mary Oliver, has the gift of writing such poetry, and it is no surprise that this collection of verse won the National Book Award.I revisited this 1992 collection of NEW AND SELECTED POEMS after reading Oliver's equally stunning THE LEAF AND THE CLOUD. "The dream of my life/ Is to lie down by a slow river/ And stare at the light in the trees," she writes in "Entering the Kingdom;" "To learn something by being nothing/ A little while but the rich/ Lens of attention" (p. 190). In her poetry, Oliver reveals her ability to pay attention to life in a deep way. "I don't know exactly what a prayer is," she writes in "The Summer Day." "I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down/ into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,/ how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,/ which is what I have been doing all day./ Tell me, what else should I have done?/ Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?/ Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?" (p. 94). In her poetry, Oliver experiences life at the edge of her senses. In "Landscape," she says, "Every morning I walk like this around/ the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart/ ever close, I am as good as dead" (p. 129).Much of Oliver's poetry is drawn from nature, where we find God speaking to her of "so many wise and delectable things" through dirt, in "his dog voice/ crow voice,/ frog voice" (pp. 120-21). In "Spring Azures," Oliver writes "In spring the blue azures bow down/ at the edges of shallow puddles/ to drink the black rain water" (p. 8). In "Peonies," she writes, "This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready/ to break my heart/ as the sun rises,/ as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers" (p. 21). In "The Moths," Oliver observes "The wings of the moths catch the sunlight/ and burn/ so brightly" (p. 133). For her, the "Trick of living" is finding Walden "where you are" (p. 239). "Do you love this world," she asks. "Do you cherish your humble and silky life?/ Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?" (p. 22).I could go on all day praising this book. Mary Oliver is one of my favorite poets, and this collection is one of my favorite books of poetry. It offers a radiant introduction to Oliver's verse, and it will also provide a good introduction to the pleasures of reading re

Every poem in this book is a gem, and the collection made me want to read her complete works. While this is definitely not "religious poetry" of the greeting card variety, it is an expression of a deep spiritual awareness. Oliver's poems often reveal an amazement and wonder at being alive. Poetic skill and heightened awareness are so well-integrated, those who are looking for well-crafted poetry will certainly find it, and those who are looking for an awakening of consciousness may also find that.Although Oliver's environment, her field of play, is nature, I wouldn't reduce her to a "naturalist poet." Nature is always interpreted and absorbed by her vision. Nature reveals its secrets to her, but they are the secrets of her own soul. In her poetry, nature is the oracle that reveals the human psyche. But I should include Oliver's own words, because no prose critique can do justice to the intoxicating natural imagery of her poems. In the poem "Peonies", the richness and fertility of nature mirror the same qualities of the imagination: This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready to break my heart as the sun rises, as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingersand they open- pools of lace,white and pink- and all day the black ants climb over them, boring their deep and mysterious holes into the curls,craving the sweet sap,...The poem ends with a challenge that reverberates through the book. In spite of the sense of death looming sometimes on the edge of the poem (and our lives), sometimes at the center, are we willing to fully experience life?Do you love this world?Do you cherish your humble and silky life?Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly,and exclaiming of their dearness,fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,their eagernessto be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing forever?

Mary Oliver's poem "The Journey" came into my life when I was seriously ill and in desperate need of permission to rest. That poem became a talisman, a mentor, a voice ringing with sanity. I have shared it with many, many people over the last 10 years.... I've yet to encounter another poet whose voice is as pure, clear, lucid, and present. Mary's poems combine all the wonder of early childhood with the exquisite vision and discernment of someone who deeply, minutely, wildly loves Creation. Her poems are blessings, nothing less.

Mary Oliver is living proof that poetry is not something that was invented, rather something that has been present since creation, in us and in nature, waiting to be discovered. And for the last thirty years Mary Oliver has not so much written poetry, but searched for, and discovered, the poetry that has existed in the world all along. It is, of course, much more complicated than that. Oliver's poetry is crafted with delicate, precise language. She lays her words out lazily across the page, often breaking the poem into three or four beat lines, letting a metaphor string out through an entire stanza. It is her imagery, her close observance of the world, that leads to the "ideas" in her poems. There is a moment in nearly all of her poems where the speaker moves from the exterior to the interior, from the water-lily cracking open to the creases in the human heart. What makes her poetry work is that none of this seems forced. It is as if she is taking the reader by the hand and saying, "Look! The sun is rising. Watch it with me for a moment and we'll decide for ourselves why it rises. For certainly, it must have its reasons."