SOURCE: "Stars and Departures, Hummingbirds and Statues," in Poetry, Vol. 166, No. 5, August, 1995, pp. 288-90.

Tillinghast is an American poet and educator. In the following review, he praises Oliver for handling "description with a satisfying, jeweler's precision" in White Pine.

Reading Mary Oliver's new book, White Pine, I was reminded of the cover of the old Petit Larousse Illustre, which shows a girl blowing on a white dandelion blossom, with the caption, "Je sème à tout vent." Oliver's poetry, pure as the cottony seeds of the dandelion, floats above and around the schools and controversies of contemporary American poetry. Her familiarity with the natural world has an uncomplicated, nineteenth-century feeling. In the poem "Work," for instance, Pasture Pond "had lain in the dark, all night, / catching the rain / on its broad back." She handles description with a satisfying, jeweler's precision. Two chicks in the poem "Hummingbirds" are pictured ready...