Mary Oliver's Red Bird

Mary Oliver won't quit. She turns seventy-three later this year, and her collection, Red Bird: Poems, just published by Beacon, is the longest new work of her renowned career. An out lesbian, she lived in Provincetown for many years before moving to Bennington with her partner Molly Malone Cook, who was also her literary agent. Cook died three years ago. Oliver's keenly observed poems of the natural world bring frequent comparisons to Thoreau and Whitman, and she has won almost all the major poetry prizes including the Lannan, the Shelley, the Pulitzer, and the National Book Award. The only question remaining about Oliver and her work is why she hasn't been selected the U.S. Poet Laureate.