SOURCE: A review of Dream Work, in Prairie Schooner, Vol. 63, No. 1, Spring, 1989, pp. 111-12.

Kuzma is an American poet. In the following review of Dream Work, he praises Oliver's "purity of motive" in expressing the gracefulness of nature.

Mary Oliver's Dream Work sees in the earth everywhere evidence of a profound satisfaction. "Each pond," she tells us, "with its blazing lilies / is a prayer heard and answered …" ("Morning Poem") or "The sea / isn't a place / but a fact, and / a mystery …" ("The Waves"). In all her various acts of defining or saying precisely what she knows, it is the earth's fact and mystery and beauty she is moving toward, a limit, a perfection. It is wiser than we are. It is more at peace. Even its humblest element surpasses us in virtue:

      Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that
      they have no tongues, could lecture
      all...