I recently read the Kindle edition of this book through Prime. I read it twice, first on my vintage Kindle, then on the Kindle app on my vintage iPad. I make the font large so I don’t have to wear my reading glasses; on the iPad the formatting stayed truer.

I especially love Oliver’s nature poems, and there are many here—Wild Geese, which is one of her most famous, and lots of others which I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. Actually, whatever the poem is really about, she seems to put some flora and fauna in it.

At first I wasn’t sure the poems resonated with me, but as I progressed, I liked them better and better. I suspect that I will love them all better through repeated readings.

The book is divided into two sections, and I haven’t figured out why yet.

One sinister poem titled “Rage” seems to refer to a father raping a child. It felt autobiographical, so I googled “Was Mary Oliver raped?” and found out she indeed was raped as a child. Another poem, “A Visitor,” describes a visit from a father who was once feared and avoided, but who is now “pathetic and hollow. . . I saw what love might have done/ had we loved in time.”

Another poem references Beethoven; another, Schumann. Several reference native Americans.

“Members of the Tribe” seems to be about suicide.

My favorite poem in the book is “Banyan,” a fantasy poem:

Something screamed
from the fringes of the swamp.
It was Banyan,
the old merchant.

It was the hundred-legged
tree, walking again.

The cattle egrets
flew out into the sunlight
like so many pieces of white ribbon.

The watersnakes slipped down the banks
like green hooks and floated away.

Banyan groaned.
A knee in the east corner buckled,

a gray shin rose, and the root,
wet and hairy,
sank back in, a little closer.

Then a voice like a howling wind deep in the leaves said:
I’ll tell you a story
about a seed.

About a seed flying into a tree and eating it
little by little.
About a small tree that becomes a huge tree
and wants to travel.

Listen, said the voice.
This is your dream.

I’m only stopping here for a little while.
Don’t be afraid.

I love “the hundred-legged tree” and the description of the egrets flying and the watersnakes slipping down like green hooks. Why is the banyan a merchant?

I like this book, but not as much as Devotions.

Want to learn more about Mary Oliver? Read Maria Shriver’s interview.