Blue Iris: Poems and Essays FROM THE PUBLISHER
In Blue Iris, Mary Oliver collects ten new poems, two dozen of her poems written over the last two decades, and two previously unpublished essays on the beauty and wonder of plants. The poet considers roses, of course, as well as poppies and peonies; lilies and morning glories; the thick-bodied black oak and the fragrant white pine; the tall sunflower and the slender bean.
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
These 32 poems and four essays offer rich meditations on flowers in nature, showing how plant life reflects the life of the human heart. Oliver, who won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for American Primitive, brings echoes of George Herbert to the fresh ground of American flowers, fields, and wilderness. In the poem "Just Lying on the Grass at Blackwater," we hear, "even silence can feel, to the world, like happiness,/ like praise,/ from the pool of shade you have found beneath the everlasting." Few poets can so persuasively transform Herbert's work. A companion volume to Oliver's recent Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays, this work presents poetry in free verse, which Oliver has perfected in all of its musicality and rhythm. The prose essays, though perhaps too brief, complement the poems by allowing us to see the natural world as it is intertwined with human understanding and human joy. General readers will enjoy this volume, which will also bring challenges to specialists. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries.-Heidi Arnold, American Theological Lib. Assoc., Chicago Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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