Devotions

I love some of her poems intensely. This collection, put together by Oliver...is not good. It took me two years to finish it, and I adore poetry. So many poems about black snakes, that often sounded the same. Many poems about how she either deeply understood the First Nations people in a New Way, not like other people, or, in one offense passage, wanted to “paint [her] skin red” and join them. This was a struggle to finish. It felt pretentious and sometimes juvenile.