Much in this latest collection by Mary Oliver is familiar. There are the poet’s favored forms: couplets, tercets and quatrains, stichics and strophes. We join Oliver as she visits a population out of doors and the nearby Atlantic Ocean. And, Blackwater Pond is still central to Oliver’s poetic landscape in Red Bird.
A State of Doubt
But what strikes the reader as different in this collection is a pervading sense of disconnect. Oliver’s joie de vivre is struggling against existential questioning, her new found faith is pitted against the wild heart of her dog, Percy, and everywhere in Red Bird, there is a tone of acquiescence rather than acceptance.
Taken as a whole, this most recent collection reflects a state of doubt, the speaker’s unending questions about life purpose, and the prevailing sense of death’s approach. Self reflection brings up a tinge of guilt when she admits that hers has been “the elite life” of poem-making (“This Day, and Probably Tomorrow Also”).
Incorporation of the Human World
What is also new in Oliver’s poetry collection is the incorporation of the human world. Poems like “Iraq” “Red,” “Showing the Birds,” and “Of the Empire” go beyond her usual natural landscape. In these and other poems, Oliver has expanded the boundaries of her subject matter: she admits war, bloodshed, capitalistic greed, the extinction of animals.
In a series of poems, the author speaks of the beloved and of the “dungeon” of the heart, revealing the tense grasp of emotional turmoil, the vulnerability that each faces when a loved one passes. The speaker’s grief is real. It vibrates through the word with simplicity and a genuineness that is the mark of an Oliver poem.
The Familiar Trope of the Natural
What remains constant in Red Bird are the characters and natural observation that launched Mary Oliver into the hearts of her devoted readers. Animals as companion guides remain an infrastructure, as the familiar trope asserts itself again and again. The “red bird” opens and closes this collection. The creature is song and soul personified and ultimately, becomes the answer to the speaker’s gripping questions.
“Red bird” is the speaker. It is the poet at her task.
And this was my true task, to be the
music of the body. Do you understand? 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.
Reference: Oliver, Mary. Red Bird. Boston: Beacon Press, 2008.
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