Summary

Long Life, as the title of that collection implies, begins by looking back at Oliver’s childhood and at her feelings about school growing up. The picture the brief poem “Just As The Calendar Began To Say Summer Again” paints is of a young Oliver entirely consistent with her later work and worldview. The other poems collected from Long Life include “Can You Imagine?”, a poem where Oliver imagines the inner life of the trees, “Softest of Mornings,” in which Oliver glories in the beauty of the day as it begins, and “Carrying The Snake To The Garden,” a long, thin poem that describes a small, quiet moment of sympathy and lack of understanding between Oliver and a small wild creature.

The next book in this section, Owls and Other Fantasies, was written just one...