Red bird came all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else could.
-- Mary Oliver, from 'Red Bird'
Red Bird is Mary Oliver's quintessential collection. Her truly timeless poetry is nourished by her intimate understanding and keen daily observation of nature: of woods and ponds, birds and animals, plants and trees. Here in Red Bird her poems both give thanks for the Earth's gifts and warn of the perils of its degredation, prompting us not to pay attention, never to take our world for granted, to 'Open your life, open your hands.' Here, too, are love poems and poems that delight in her disobedient dog, Percy.
In Red Bird, the fiery red bird who greets us on the opening page stays with the reader, appearing in unexpected forms and guises until, finally, he asks us to listen: '. . . 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.'
