Editorial Review:
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Mary Oliver’s twelfth book of poetry, Red Bird comprises sixty-one poems, the most ever in a single volume of her work. Overflowing with her keen observation of the natural world and her gratitude for its gifts, for the many people she has loved in her seventy years, as well as for her disobedient dog Percy, Red Bird is a quintessential collection of Oliver’s finest lyrics.
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Reader Reviews for Red Bird:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Love this book!
Comment: This is one of the best books by Mary Oliver I've read. If you want to read some great work by an award winning poet, this is the place to start.
A few lines from this book:
"I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God. One of which was you."
"Put your lips to the world and live your life."
The poems in the books are largely nature inspired, but there is more. There is a poem about Iraq, Our culture, her dog Percy. All these poems are great, fun, light spirited and deep.
Mary Oliver has a simple way of personifying nature, and life that make her poetry easy to read, relatable, and unpretentious.
Her poetry is inspiring, and more so in this book than any of her others that I have read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A great poetry book even for those who don't "like" poetry
Comment: Mary Oliver's 12th book of poetry, Red Bird is wonderful. I not being a poetry aficionado never-the-less found much to appreciate in her work. Her poems are clear and easy to understand; a refreshing change for someone like me that does not necessarily "get" some of the denser poets. More so, I found her poetry to be highly inspirational. While reading I found myself thinking multiple times "this would be a good poem to live the day by." At least one of the poems consists of no more than two lines and the title, yet the short length does not diminish the meaning or the depth of what she wants to convey. A few lines of her poem "The Teachers" clearly illustrate what I believe she accomplishes in her work:
So I do not go
Far from that school
With its star-bright
Or blue ceiling,
And I listen to those teachers,
And others too -
The wind in the trees
And the water waves - (9-16)
She truly "listens" to the world around her and transposes what she sees and hears into the written word. Some of her poems are light-hearted, some sad, others thought-provoking, and others purely comical. My particular favorites had to be the ones about Percy, as I myself have a "Percy" at home. Give this book a try even if you are not a "poetry fan" I guarantee you'll find at least one poem that you'll take away in your heart. Now I'm off to find her other poetry books. Yes, me, the non-poetry fan.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Here and Now
Comment: If you love poetry and this world at our fingertips, especially its animals and seasons, you will love these poems.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Poems of considerable beauty
Comment: Mary Oliver loves life and appreciates every moment of it. Her poetry is uplifting and she teaches us how to be aware of every moment, to love life with everything that it offers and to love oneself. She savors the ocean, visits a graveyard and salutes a red bird in winter.
"Whoever you are", she writes, "no matter how lonely,/the world offers itself to your imagination".
She speaks also against mankind's abuses of the planet, reminding us how necessary it is to celebrate nature instead of destroying it.
Her poems are of considerable beauty.
Joyce Akesson author of Love's Thrilling Dimensions
Customer Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary and Compelling
Comment:
I had the privilege of seeing Mary Oliver in person; her physical appearance was so like her poetry. Human, present, honest and brilliant. A woman asked her a question, then the woman began to cry and the audience came to a slightly embarrassed quiet. Mary called out "Are you crying?" The woman barely answered, but one could hear her say "yes". "Good for you" said Mary, which just about brought the house down with sympathy and relief.
This was shortly after her partner died; the book is full of her courage, grief and ability to recognize the wonders in life even as her heart is aching. A must read for every woman who has ever expressed a love of poetry.
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