SOURCE: "Dialogues Between History and Dream," in Michigan Quarterly Review, Vol. 36, No. 2, Spring, 1987, pp. 428-38.

In the following review, Steinman finds an "almost romantic lyricism" in Dream Work that floats over a deeper personal perspective of the past.

Mary Oliver's Dream Work, the last book reviewed here, stands out when placed next to the three books discussed above [The Happy Man, by Donald Hall, The Walls of Thebes, by David R. Slavitt, and Thomas and Beulah, by Rita Dove], precisely because it seems to take no notice of any past or history. True, the cover of one of Oliver's earlier volumes, The Night Traveler, showed a portrait of Virgil; but even there Oliver's Virgil came by way of Blake. Dream Work, in fact, opens with the poem "Dogfish" in which Oliver writes: "I wanted / the past to go away, I wanted / to leave it, like another country." Later...