Customer Reviews

White Pine: Poems and Prose Poems

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An old man I know, who lives a reclusive life with 10 aging cats as his only companions, is the person I have to thank for turning me on to Mary Oliver. We live in a rural area and can vouch for the accuracy and honesty of her work. Deer, foxes, and a multitude of birds are common sights for us, as they are apparently for Mary Oliver, but through her poet's eye we are reminded not to take for granted our great good fortune in living here. We can read her words and say, "Yes. I remember that." After reading her poems and prose, left with the gift of her vision, what had simply been home and common place is now touched again with the kind of magic we felt when we first moved here 20 years ago.

I do not like modern poetry as I find most of it to be either pathetic whining that the world will not devote itself to making the writer happy or meaningless babble where the writer thinks themselves clever for being undecipherable.

When I came across Mary Oliver's White Pine, I picked it up with some reluctance. I put it down with complete satisfaction.

Erudite, yet approachable. Deep, but not obtuse. Pointed observations are made, but without preachy self-centeredness. Modern poets can learn a lot from Mary Oliver.

Her descriptions and mastery of language are nothing short of pure magic, but I want to do more than reference Oliver's power of observation and description. Treating the reader with respect (and how rare that is in today's poetry), she lets us walk with her through the wooded hills, lush meadows, and seashores of her native Massachusetts, pointing out the common in new ways, making it all wondrous as if being seen for the first time. She has a philosophy of life that she shares gently, without feeling a need to beat it into the reader with all the subtlety of a crowbar.

I count myself fortunate to encounter Mary Oliver's work and I look forward to reading more of it. White Pine was a great place to start and it would be a great place for you to start too.

The outlay of this book gives the feel of one long, lingering poem. The first poem, on a day of writing while nature cycles itself outside Oliver's window, serves as preface into a series of walks, gaining insight from birds and deer, sea-animals, and a single snake, a copperhead proem. The final poems are darker, wiser--of learning death then writing death, and the sweetness of love in all its forms.

Oliver's form is lax, inventive, gentle, which I enjoy. I was eagerly reminded of Yeats, though instead of fairies, elves, and nether-worlds, there is the grandeur of forest animals, the mystery of the mammal, the avian, the sea-dweller, the skeleton. I felt Oliver's role as observer in the forest became too detached from the human-doings and I couldn't grasp her trails as thoroughly as I might have wished. But in this she gains a surreal other-world which, unlike with Yeats' nether-worlds, we can see with our eyes, following on the tip of her pen. I love her poems. I bit in and held on dog-toothed until I was done.

I first heard this poetry in my yoga class, where the teacher ends the sessions with some quote or poem. She was so excited by Mary Oliver's work, and I was, too,(upon looking through her copy of this book). I ordered it for myself, along with another book and and audiobook all by Mary Oliver.

I was very pleased about the condition and speed at which I received this book.