SOURCE: A review of A Poetry Handbook, in The Los Angeles Times Book Review, June 12, 1994, p. 6.

In the following review, Reynolds applauds Oliver for going beyond a how-to format to "connect the conscious mind and the heart."

Most of us have a natural aversion to books that presume to tell us how to write poetry. [A Poetry Handbook] is not one of those books. Mary Oliver would probably never admit to anything so grandiose as an effort to connect the conscious mind and the heart (that's what she says poetry can do), but that is exactly what she accomplishes in this stunning little handbook, ostensibly written "to empower the beginning writer who stands between two marvelous and complex things—an experience (or an idea of a feeling), and the urge to tell about it in the best possible conjunction of words." From here on in it's all straightforward...