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Rating: 
Summary: Birds along the path to heaven.
Review: Pulitzer-Prize winning poet, Mary Oliver, demonstrates that in a world of "leaves and feathers, and comfort, and instruction" (p. 3), paying attention "is our endless and proper work" (p. 27). With a poet's gift of observation, and a naturalist's eye for detail, Oliver devotes this collection of verse almost entirely to birds. Just as the recent documentary, WINGED MIGRATION, captured the truly amazing nature of birds on film, Oliver captures the fascinating beauty of birds in verse. She compares goldfinches to "fragile bells" reminding us to bow our heads and say a prayer (p. 7), herons in a frozen marsh to "blue smoke" (p. 24), little wrens to "blue sailors" (p. 46), herons on a leafy bank to a "blue preacher" and "an old Chinese poet" (p. 48), an owl to "an angel, or a buddha with wings" (p. 54), starlings to "acrobats in the freezing wind" (p. 56), and an unknown bird that has left a egg to "a tree angel, perhaps, or a ghost of holiness" (p. 60). For Oliver, "the path to heaven doesn't lie down in flat miles," it's in "the imagination with which you perceive the world" (p. 11).G. Merritt
Rating:
Summary: Birds along the path to heaven.
Review: Pulitzer-Prize winning poet, Mary Oliver, demonstrates that in a world of "leaves and feathers, and comfort, and instruction" (p. 3), paying attention "is our endless and proper work" (p. 27). With a poet's gift of observation, and a naturalist's eye for detail, Oliver devotes this collection of verse almost entirely to birds. Just as the recent documentary, WINGED MIGRATION, captured the truly amazing nature of birds on film, Oliver captures the fascinating beauty of birds in verse. She compares goldfinches to "fragile bells" reminding us to bow our heads and say a prayer (p. 7), herons in a frozen marsh to "blue smoke" (p. 24), little wrens to "blue sailors" (p. 46), herons on a leafy bank to a "blue preacher" and "an old Chinese poet" (p. 48), an owl to "an angel, or a buddha with wings" (p. 54), starlings to "acrobats in the freezing wind" (p. 56), and an unknown bird that has left a egg to "a tree angel, perhaps, or a ghost of holiness" (p. 60). For Oliver, "the path to heaven doesn't lie down in flat miles," it's in "the imagination with which you perceive the world" (p. 11). G. Merritt
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