Mary Oliver’s poetry collection “Red Bird” is the first I’ve read of her. I think “Devotions” is the recommended collection to start with, so perhaps that was my mistake, but I didn’t really connect to any of her poetry. But I’ve also heard that Mary Oliver mainly writes about nature, and I honestly like to experience nature more than I like to read about it. And I like to read about people more than I like to experience them. That might sum up my reading preferences rather nicely.
“Red Bird” is all about the beauty of nature, how humans would be much happier if they lived life simply like an animal, gratitude for lessons from nature, etc.
There were a few lines that I really liked (see those lines below), but overall I wasn’t entirely impressed. It didn’t speak to me. Again, perhaps it was the subject matter. There were two poems that felt out of place in the collection because they had little to do with nature, and those were actually the ones I liked the most: “Love Sorrow” and “What is the greatest gift.” The other poem I liked that had more to do with nature and how it connects to human experience was “The Orchard,” probably because it wasn’t as straightforward and obvious as the others. The others I felt were uninspired and too simplistic. The language made for light reading, very accessible for modern readers, which isn’t my thing. The imagery wasn’t anything special. The structure of a lot of the poems was too obviously “insert random line break here so it’s visually obvious it’s a poem even though it does not serve the language well.”
I purposefully picked up Mary Oliver because I wanted to become more acquainted with more contemporary poetry and because so many people like her. I wanted to learn how to write poetry proven to be liked by contemporary audiences, but if this is it, I’d rather not.
Lines that stood out to me (from three different poems):
and I could not tell / which fit me / more comfortably, the power / or the powerlessness; / neither would have me / entirely; I was divided
Why are we made the way we are made, that to love is to want?
I did not come into this world / to be comforted. / I came, like red bird, to sing.
