SOURCE: A review of House of Light, in The Bloomsbury Review, Vol. 10, No. 3, May/June, 1990, pp. 1, 28.

In the following review, Swanson finds House of Light to be a contemplative exploration of the paradoxes of nature to reveal the self.

We have come to expect images of the natural world in Mary Oliver's poetry: dark ponds and bears and lilies, deer, crows, and snakes. Never has the natural world been so pervasive as it is in her latest book, House of Light; never before have the human subjects—when they appear at all—been shown at such remove. Yet, each poem is a deep human cry, a search for a connection with nature that will relieve feelings of loneliness and isolation:

      I saw the heron shaking
      its damp wings—
      and then I felt
      an explosion—
      a pain—
      also a happiness
      I can hardly mention
      as I slid free—
      as...