At Blackwater Pond

April 3, 2006
For decades, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Oliver has written in praise of the natural world, searching nature for answers to questions about belonging, faith, love, life and death. She is a poet of empathy, but she lets no one off easy—her love is sometimes tough. Still, there is powerful consolation everywhere in her work, as in her well-known poem, "Wild Geese: 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." In Oliver's world, a heron becomes "an old Chinese poet," and a worker bee's three-week life is long enough "to know that life is a blessing." Now, in her first CD of recorded readings, Oliver reads poems from several books spanning her entire career, including the acclaimed House of Light
and Dream Work
and Why I Wake Early
. In clear, crisp studio sound, Oliver's voice comes across insistent and calming. Released just in time for National Poetry Month, this CD makes a good introduction or companion to Oliver's accessible work and an inviting gateway to poetry for newcomers.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver reads 42 of her poems from various collections. Oliver writes as a naturalist, and her deceptively simple meditations on peonies and goldfinches always reward with deeper meaning. Listening to these poems is to be awash in their beautiful language and imagery. Oliver reads clearly and with a steady tone that gives the poems a repetitive sameness they don't suffer on the page. Then again, as Oliver writes in her introduction, "They are neither oracular nor authoritative nor, I hope, are they read either in shyness or a too sufficient certainty." What is certain is that the opportunity to hear a poet read her own work is a gift. Lovely packaging makes this collection a keepsake. J.M.D. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

April 15, 2006
Oliver, winner of a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, is certainly no B-Thoreau, but the communion these poems seek with animal and vegetable life is something Thoreau would have admired. The owls, peonies, goldfinches, and wild geese Oliver describes here lead uncomplicated lives the poet yearns to imitate. And it's a treat to hear contemporary poetry that veers far from the confessional. Culled from seven of over 20 poetry books, the pieces share a focus that begins to seem repetitive near the end, yet there are always slight variations. This exquisitely packaged CD is the first audio volume of Oliver's work to be presented -a bit surprising, since she speaks in the introduction about how poetry is never finished until it is performed. While she's an excellent narrator, she obviously draws from different readings, hence the volume and pitch of the voice vary every so often. On one hand, it would have been nice to have a little author's commentary between some of the poems; on the other, Oliver is so present as observer, believer, and chronicler that no further words are needed." -Rochelle Ratner, formerly withSoho Weekly News", New York

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.