Mary Oliver: Blue Horses: Poems, (New York: Penguin Press.), 2014

You might expect that a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who has been publishing poetry for more than 60 years to have an air of seriousness and perhaps even a formality of style that adheres to the rules of poetic expression. I guess I did. What I didn't expect from this book, even though it isn't the first volume of Mary Oliver's poetry that I have read, was the simply delightful, roll-on-the-floor-laughter sense of humor that exudes from some of the poems in this book.

"Yes, by the heavens, if I wanted a boat I would want a boat I couldn't steer." I know you have to read the whole poem for this simple line to come as a "zinger" at the end that gets you laughing.

this is a book to savor and delight and put down and pick up again and read again - the kind of book that finds a home on the headboard of my bed.

Perhaps the Pulitzer prize judges aren't as stuffy as I imagine.