House of Light

Oliver investigates themes on “how to love this world" and to live “as though time didn’t exist” in her poems “Spring” and “The Swan,” and she awakens within us a renewed sense of awe in “The Ponds”: “Still, what I want in my life / is to be willing / to be dazzled— / to cast aside the weight of facts // and maybe even / to float a little / above this difficult world.” As her words suspend time and space, Oliver encourages us to attune ourselves to the quiet moments of enlightenment that perforate each day. Meditative and soulful, the forty-six poems in this collection honor our collective threads of humanity and our never-ending quest for grace. “Oliver's poems are thoroughly convincing—as genuine, moving, and implausible as the first caressing breeze of spring.” —The New York Times Book Review