The New York Times has called Mary Oliver's poems "thoroughly convincing - as ge
nuine, moving, and implausible as the first caressing breeze of spring." In this
stunning collection of forty poems - nineteen previously unpublished - she writ
es of nature and love, of the way they transform over time. And the way they rem
ain constant. And what did you think love would be like? A summer day? The bramb
les in their places, and the long stretches of mud? Flowers in every field, in e
very garden, with their soft beaks and their pastel shoulders? On one street aft
er another, the litter ticks in the gutter. In one room after another, the lover
s meet, quarrel, sicken, break apart, cry out. One or two leap from windows. Mos
t simply lean, exhausted, their thin arms on the sill. They have done all they c
ould. The golden eagle, that lives not far from here, has perhaps a thousand tin
y feathers flowing from the back of its head, each one shaped like an infinitely
small but perfect spear.
