|
|
4.0 out of 5 stars
Plowing the natural world with prose-horse in harness., May 16 2004
For Pulitzer-Prize and National-Book-Award winning poet, Mary Oliver, the big question the world throws at her every morning is, "Here you are, alive. Would like to make a comment?" This book, she says, is her comment (p. xiv). Given the choice of prose-horse in harness, or the horse of poetry with wings, Oliver says that she would rather fly than plow (p. xiv). However, in this rare collection of essays (punctuated with an occasional poem), Oliver mostly plows.Oliver's prose here is both memorable and radiant. As in most of her poetry, these essays draw their inspiration from the natural world, which has always offered Oliver the hint of our single and immense divinity--"a million unopened fountains" (p. 19). In her solitude--a "prerequisite to being openly and joyfully susceptible and responsive to the world of leaves, light, birdsong, flowers, [and] flowing water" (p. 22), we find Oliver contemplating the "connection between soul and landscape" in these essays, which explore death, the poetry of unleashed dogs, the town dump, sprawl, Wordsworth, Emerson, and Hawthorne. In one of my all-time favorite Oliver moments, she asks, "What would it be like to live one whole day as a Ruskin sentence, wandering like a creek with little comma bridges" (p. 85)? In her poetry, Oliver soars. In her prose, she digs deep. G. Merritt
|
