That's how I feel about Red Bird, the latest poetry chapbook by Mary Oliver. The language is simple, sparse even, and the structure repetitive. I will quite concede the fact that maybe I was not in the right frame of mind when I read this. But many of the poems were permeated with a certain egocentrism--more than other poetry at any rate--and I was wondering if this wouldn't be better served as a monologue.
The subjects of the Oliver poems are of a naturalistic bent. The collection itself is bracketed by the motif of the red bird which flits throughout the works as a beacon. The poems themselves are rather dark--speaking of night and winter. Even when the setting is spring or summer, it's in the early morning when the darkness is still clinging with tenterhooks. It's the inexorable river images of passing time, the mentions of civilization's disastrous byproducts in the more political pieces, and the dark edges of self-contemplation in the cycle "Eleven Versions of the Same Poem" that emphasizes life as depressing and unpleasant.
The only thing that saves life from being truly depressing and unpleasant is the "red bird". Sometimes, this symbol doesn't appear as a red bird at all. It could be aspects of the red bird--like flute players, roses, the coming dawn, the tongue of a panther, apples, berries--which are all vibrant and energetic and as indicated in the collection's final poem, "Red Bird Explains Himself," the soul.
It's not surprising that Oliver writes that the soul is essential for life. With frequent references to God, it is not hard to imagine that perhaps her religious upbringing/beliefs have influenced the philosophy of her work. But whatever meaning she was trying to convey, I was not keen on her style. Red Bird is rather blunt word-smithing that sometimes seem unnecessarily enigmatic. It's like an adult's simulation of a child's drawing of a cat in crayon. Upon first glance, you can't really tell what it is, but after an explanation (in Red Bird's case, the last poem of the collection), it becomes obvious in a strange deliberate way.
, the latest poetry chapbook by 
