March 1, 2008
Birds are totem animals for poets, and Oliver writes of her winged kindred spirits often, here addressing red bird with gratitude for firing up the landscape in winter. Red bird is an emblem of passion in a frozen world, and a sign of Olivers own resurgence of love and hope after the profound griefof her last collection, Thirst (2006). In Summer Morning, she writes, Heart, / I implore you, / its time to come back / from the dark. And in Self -Portrait, she exclaims, Ah! seventy. And still / in love with life. And still / full of beans. One of few avidly read living poets, Oliver revels in the beauty of the living world, and takes to heart its lessons in patience and pleasure, cessation and renewal. As piercingly observantas ever in this substantial and forthright collection, Oliver is rhapsodic. But she is also wry, caustic, and elegiac incritiquing our habit of violence, the debris of progress, and the cruel fate of rivers, polar bears, and all the wildplaces and animals weve endangered, and from which we still have so much to learn.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)