Winter Hours

Mary Oliver talks here of turtle eggs and housebuilding, of her surprise at the sudden powerful flight of swans, of the "thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else." She talks of her own poems and of some of her favorite poets: Poe, writing of our "inescapable destiny," Frost and his ability to convey at once that "everything is all right, and everything is not all right," the "unmistakably joyful" Hopkins, and Whitman, seeking through his poetry "the replication of a miracle." And Oliver offers us a glimpse as well of her "private and natural self - something that must in the future be taken into consideration by any who would claim to know me."