Review by Booklist Review
An exquisite book-length poem by a poet devoted to close scrutiny of the natural world and exact, sensuous, and ecstatic description. Lyrical and philosophical in the American transcendental tradition, Oliver addresses her readers directly to ravishing effect, and there is magic and wisdom in her gleaming language and aesthetically arresting metaphors. Here she offers instructions for living: "When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider / the orderliness of the world." Accepting the mantle of age, Oliver declares, "I am a woman sixty years old, and glory is my work." And glory is her gift to readers as she contemplates, as though for the first time, flowers, stone, water, the joyful grace of bounding dogs, the surprise of a snake, and the way words, love, and the sky open to us when we stay still, listen, and look. Bathed in the glow of all that she surveys, Oliver observes that death, too, is part of life's order and therefore beautiful. --Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Oliver's seven-part book-length poem takes its title from Ruskin: "Between the earth and man arose the leaf. Between the heaven and man came the cloud." Oliver's speaker meditates on her own mortality, feels her body "rising through the water/ not much more than a leaf," and declares that she "believes in God,/ though she has no word for it." Wandering wide-eyed through poem, book and world, she can seem too obviously faux nave, more stentorian than Marianne Moore-like: "my mother, alas, alas,/ did not always love her life,/ heavier than iron it was/ as she carried it in her arms/ from room to room,/ oh, unforgettable!" Indeed, many of the interrogatives here seem to come right out of a children's book ("Did you know that the ant has a tongue/ with which to gather in all that it can/ of sweetness?// Did you know that?") as do the apostrophes: "and will you find yourself finally wanting to forget/ all enclosures, including// the enclosure of yourself, o lonely leaf." Oliver at her best is less self-consciously playful, whether considering "the mosquito's/ dark dart,/ flushing and groaning" or "the big owl, shaking herself/ out of the pitchpines." But preciousness mars the volume in section after section, undermining fresh utterancesÄ"I will sing for the Jains and their careful brooms./ I will sing for the salt and the pepper in their little towers on the clean table"Äwith a cartoonlike silliness: "I will sing for the two coyotes who came at me with their strong teeth/ and then, at the last moment, began to smile," or worse, with banal abstractions: "I will sing for what is in front of the veil, the floating light./ I will sing for what is behind the veil-light, light, and more light." While the speaker begins many of the lines in humility, she inevitably gets caught up in the wonder and frenzy of her own creations, making this book seem more like an ecstatic one-off than a substantial new collection from a Pulitzer Prize winner. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
"Welcome to the silly, comforting poem." So begins Oliver's new book-length poem in seven parts. The opening can be misleading. Those who are familiar with Oliver's work, though, will not be put off by the casual, almost flippant tone or the simplicity of language. They know that this, too, will be a smart, wonderful meditation, a rumination through and about Nature and death, a glimpse into our deepest, quietest selves: "I am a woman sixty years old and of no special courage./ EverydayDa little conversation with God, or his envoy/ the tall pine, or the grass-swimming cricket." Oliver has a knack for opening doors onto corridors that have long been closed off and forgotten. Few readers will be newcomers to Oliver's poems; she has won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award and deserves the heady reputation that goes with them. Her new work is a delight, at once exactly what her readers will expect and deserves yet amazingly fresh. Essential for any serious contemporary poetry collection.DLouis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Those familiar with Olivers work will not be caught off guard by her latest, essentially one long piece comprised of seven poems. Each is further broken down into numbered sections in which long and short lines are jumbled together, and stanzaic patterns appear and vanish, seemingly at random. It has the look of experimental poetry, but while the arrangement is looser and more expansive than in many of her earlier collections, her subject is the same: the natural world and her (read our) spiritual connection to it. Oliver has not yet exhausted the possibilities of natureher attention to detail is sharp, her descriptions often beautifully apt and touching. At the beginning of the second section, she proclaims, I am a woman sixty years old and of no special courage. Such droll moments are rare, but they introduce a welcome humility to work that elsewhere lapses into piety and self-importance, especially in the many catalogues of images. There, the author sounds like a poet more under the spell of Whitman than Frost, who is clearly another influence. This need not be a bad thing, except that it induces sentiments like I will sing for the iron doors of the prison / and for the broken doors of the poor, / and for the sorrow of the rich, who are mistaken and lonely. Also bothersome are the frequent references to the poem itself (Welcome to the silly, comforting poem). But there is finally little comfort in the pivotal questionwhat does it mean, that the world is beautifulwhen we know, as the poet must, that the answer could easily be nothing. Maintains the status quo of Olivers previous work, but breaks no new ground.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
