Summary

New and Selected Poems Volume Two has death hanging over it. The opening poem, “Hum,” would fit neatly into any of Oliver’s collections. In “Hum,” Oliver watches the bees and reflects on what she learns from watching them. However, the next poem, “Lead,” is about loons who are dying, and the one after that, “Oxygen,” is about Oliver’s partner, who rarely makes appearances in her poems, who is also dying. Oliver returns to a much-loved place in “White Heron Rises Over Blackwater,” and in the next poem, “Honey Locust,” even her delirious poem of love for the honey locust tree ends with, “Gladness gleams / all the way to the grave,” (21-22). There is beauty in the world, Oliver says with the poems in this collection, and that beauty is even more...