April is National Poetry Month, and it's a good time to become familiar with the work of Mary Oliver, one of our finest poets. April also heralds the arrival of our long-delayed Spring, which provides us with an excellent opportunity to read Oliver’s work, much of which extols the simple beauties of nature and the emotions evoked by them.

A native of Ohio, Oliver often writes of the change of seasons in this part of the country, as in her poem “Wild Geese," an excerpt of which appears below:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

from Dream Work by Mary Oliver
published by Atlantic Monthly Press
© Mary Oliver

The Library has the following books by Oliver. Each is located on the second floor.

• The Pulitzer Prize-winning American Primitive (Call number: PS3565.L5 A66 1983)
• The Night Traveler (Call number: PS3565.L5 N5)
• Her latest collection, Red Bird (Call number PS 3565 .L5 R43 2008)
• West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems (Call number: PS3565.L5 W4 1997)
• Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems and Poems (Call number: PS3565.L5 W56 1999)

Charles Dabkowski wrote this Monthly Book Spotlight.