Red Bird: Poems [Hardcover]

Mary Oliver (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2008

Red bird came all winter / firing up the landscape / as nothing else could. So begins Mary Oliver's twelfth book of poetry, and the image of that fiery bird stays with the reader, appearing in unexpected forms and guises until, in a postscript, he explains himself: "For truly the body needs / a song, a spirit, a soul. And no less, to make this work, / the soul has need of a body, / and I am both of the earth and I am of the inexplicable / beauty of heaven / where I fly so easily, so welcome, yes, / and this is why I have been sent, to teach this to your heart."

This collection of sixty-one new poems, the most ever in a single volume of Oliver's work, includes an entirely new direction in the poet's work: a cycle of eleven linked love poems-a dazzling achievement. As in all of Mary Oliver's work, the pages overflow with her keen observation of the natural world and her gratitude for its gifts, for the many people she has loved in her seventy years, as well as for her disobedient dog, Percy. But here, too, the poet's attention turns with ferocity to the degradation of the Earth and the denigration of the peoples of the world by those who love power. Red Bird is unquestionably Mary Oliver's most wide-ranging volume to date.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

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 Oliver’s own resurgence of love and hope after the profound grief of her last collection, Thirst (2006). In “Summer Morning,” she writes, “Heart, / I implore you, / it’s 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 observant as ever in this substantial and forthright collection, Oliver is rhapsodic. But she is also wry, caustic, and elegiac in critiquing our habit of violence, “the debris of progress,” and the cruel fate of rivers, polar bears, and all the wild places and animals we’ve endangered, and from which we still have so much to learn. --Donna Seaman

Review

Mary Oliver, who won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, is my choice for her joyous, accessible, intimate observations of the natural world . . . She teaches us the profound act of paying attention—a living wonder that makes it possible to appreciate all the others.—Renée Loth, Boston Globe

"It has always seemed . . . that Mary Oliver might leave us any minute. Even a 1984 Pulitzer Prize couldn't pin her to the ground. She'd change quietly into a heron or a bear and fly or walk off forever. Her poems contain windows, doors, transformations, hints on how to escape the body; there's the 'glamour of death' and the 'life after the earth-life.' This urge to be transformed is yoked to a joy in this moment, this life, this body."—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

"'My work is loving the world,' Oliver tells us . . . She has always done that work . . . in poems of considerable beauty. Now she rises, not above the world, but through it."—Jay Parini, The Guardian

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press; First Printing edition (April 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807068926
• ISBN-13: 978-0807068922
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 0.5 x 8.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #202,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A private person by nature, Mary Oliver has given very few interviews over the years. Instead, she prefers to let her work speak for itself. And speak it has, for the past five decades, to countless readers. The New York Times recently acknowledged Mary Oliver as "far and away, this country's best-selling poet." Born in a small town in Ohio, Oliver published her first book of poetry in 1963 at the age of 28; No Voyage and Other Poems, originally printed in the UK by Dent Press, was reissued in the United States in 1965 by Houghton Mifflin. Oliver has since published many works of poetry and prose. As a young woman, Oliver studied at Ohio State University and Vassar College, but took no degree. She lived for several years at the home of Edna St. Vincent Millay in upper New York state, companion to the poet's sister Norma Millay. It was there, in the late '50s, that she met photographer Molly Malone Cook. For more than forty years, Cook and Oliver made their home together, largely in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where they lived until Cook's death in 2005. Over the course of her long and illustrious career, Oliver has received numerous awards. Her fourth book, American Primitive, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984. She has also received the Shelley Memorial Award; a Guggenheim Fellowship; an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Achievement Award; the Christopher Award and the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award for House of Light; the National Book Award for New and Selected Poems; a Lannan Foundation Literary Award; and the New England Booksellers Association Award for Literary Excellence. Oliver's essays have appeared in Best American Essays 1996, 1998, 2001; the Anchor Essay Annual 1998, as well as Orion, Onearth and other periodicals. Oliver was editor of Best American Essays 2009. Oliver's books on the craft of poetry, A Poetry Handbook and Rules for the Dance, are used widely in writing programs. She is an acclaimed reader and has read in practically every state as well as other countries. She has led workshops at various colleges and universities, and held residencies at Case Western Reserve University, Bucknell University, University of Cincinnati, and Sweet Briar College. From 1995, for five years, she held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College. She has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from The Art Institute of Boston (1998), Dartmouth College (2007) and Tufts University (2008). Oliver currently lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the inspiration for much of her work.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Extraordinary Voice of the Ordinary World, May 5, 2008

By 

Sandy Carlson "SandyCarlson" (Connecticut, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Red Bird: Poems (Hardcover)

Are you familiar with the poetry of Mary Oliver?" I asked a student once in the hope of beginning a conversation on the poem "Wild Geese," a gem that contains the lines

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

en route to the statement "Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,/the world offers itself to your imagination." This was the line I wanted in the hope of beginning a conversation on inspiration.

"I think so," the young woman squinted, the better to scan a distant memory. "I think that's the lady who writes about, like, her dog, Percy, I think and trees. That her?"

"You can start there," I said. "And you will get to Mary Oliver."

Because Mary Oliver's poetry is about this moment in this world in this light in this weather, alone or with the dog or on the way to something or nothing. It's about being here and loving it.

I believe there is nothing worth saying about Mary Oliver. Better to spend the time reading her work, or revisiting the magic of the landscape of your life.

Her new collection Red Bird is her 12th volume of published poems. Here she speaks to the beauty of the ordinary, the environment, and the people of the world who suffer at the hands of those who love power.

The world offers itself to your imagination. Accept the invitation and walk with this wonderful woman from Provincetown, Massachusetts.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Red Bird" Fly's, April 3, 2008

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Barbara Levinson "BLWriter" (Azusa, Ca USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Red Bird: Poems (Hardcover)

Mary Oliver's simple, spiritual, nature infused poetry was never better. She teaches us all to watch all the details of Gods creations without preaching. We learn from the movement of her poetry, to recognize a cardinal when he lands, to know the names of all of natures wonders: pine needles and prairie dogs, cypress and elm,and we love the class as we learn. She faces life's curve balls with the wit and eye of a portrait painter who sees the tattered dress she wears as a badge not a burden. And she is aging so gracefully. I hope I do as well.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Present Moment Beauty, May 2, 2008

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Jacqueline Woodland "Pema" (Canberra, ACT Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Red Bird: Poems (Hardcover)

How beautifully we are invited in this most beautiful of Mary Oliver's books, to cease our restless strivings, to simply stand still, to listen, to watch, and to breathe in in gratitude for all that Life presents! Her words paint the invitation for us in tones that are sometimes as gentle as water-colours, sometimes as vibrant as a rich oil painting, revealing her awareness in the moment, telling us so much about her own love for life in all its forms. One of her great gifts is that ability to draw us to her as well as to the miracle of life around us, so that we have the feeling of walking the same path with her in companionable joy each moment. - It has been a great read, one that has brought much peace and a feeling of tranquillity and wellbeing to my spirit.