I came to this book because it contains Oliver’s most popular poem, “The Summer Day” with its famous final line, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life.?” The line had been quoted in “Stone Yard Devotional” by  Charlotte Wood, and having identified the volume in which it appeared, I decided to read the book.  Oliver won two major poetry prizes for this book before going on to win a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize for her poetry.

This book is a fine example of both why poets write and Oliver’s poetry specifically.  The eye for detail; the passionate love of nature; the need and ability to translate that love and eye into words so the reader can share the experience are all on display in this slim volume.

Many of the poems in “The House of Light” in additon to “The Summer Day” also have precise and precious lines.  There’s “The Gift” which tells of her taking a tape recorder to a field and playing Mahler for a mockingbird who repaid the favor with “Now when I go down to the field, a little Mahler spills/through the sputter os his song.  How happy I am, lounging in the light, listening as the music/floats by!/And I give thanks also for my mind, that thought of giving/a gift./And mostly I’m grateful that I take this world so seriously.”  There’s also “The Terns” which ends with this line:  “this is a poem about loving/the world and everything in it:/the self, the perpetual muscle,/the passage in and out, the bristling/swing of the sea.”

Oliver, who died in 2019 at 83 has left us a wonderful collection of poems worth dipping into at any season and in any place.  Her home and favorite spot was Provincetown where she lived with her partner of 40 years, but any place where one can see, touch, hear, or taste the natural world is a great spot to enjoy her work.