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Features previously published and new poems that explore the natural world and how it is connected to human beings and spirituality.
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Fantastic! Oliver's poems always touch my heart, and this collection shares her best...especially "Wild Geese," and "The Journey."
I'll admit it. I'm often intimidated by poetry. Many times I can't understand or find meaning in poems I've read.
I was familiar with some of Mary Oliver's most well-known poems, such as "The Summer Day", "Wild Geese", and "Why I Wake Early", but wouldn't have read this entire book if it wasn't for a challenge for National Poetry month.
I'm very glad that I took the time to go through this book poem by poem. While there were a few that left me scratching my head, on the whole Oliver's poems are ap I'll admit it. I'm often intimidated by poetry. Many times I can't understand or find meaning in poems I've read.
I'm very glad that I took the time to go through this book poem by poem. While there were a few that left me scratching my head, on the whole Oliver's poems are approachable and quite moving. Using the natural world as inspiration, Oliver creates metaphors and observations about the human condition that beautifully ring true.
I dog-eared at least 20 poems in this collection, so I can easily find them later, and discovered new favorites such as "Whelks" "The Sun", "University Hospital, Boston" and "The Black Walnut Tree".
I LOVE Mary Oliver and would recommend her poetry to anyone. One of the reasons I so love her work is that she is totally accessible. She doesn't write those things that are so obtuse that you are afraid to say, "What the hell is that about?" because everyone else is also afraid to say that and so they all act like it's just brilliant and so no one ever just says, "That makes no *&$%!*&! sense at all. It's horrible." And such is the world of art and poetry today.
Anyway, enough of my rant I LOVE Mary Oliver and would recommend her poetry to anyone. One of the reasons I so love her work is that she is totally accessible. She doesn't write those things that are so obtuse that you are afraid to say, "What the hell is that about?" because everyone else is also afraid to say that and so they all act like it's just brilliant and so no one ever just says, "That makes no *&$%!*&! sense at all. It's horrible." And such is the world of art and poetry today.
Anyway, enough of my rant. If you don't care for poetry but would like to, read Mary Oliver. My two favorite poems are "Summer Day" & "Wild Geese." Google them. Read them. Go ahead. I dare you.
these are poems that teach us how to read (and write) poems. also how to be alive, pay attention, fall in love, find god. it goes in reverse chronological order, so we get to follow the truth as it wiggles all the way back into Oliver's earliest published poems, and waits to expand into every pore of her later work.
i read "in blackwater woo these are poems that teach us how to read (and write) poems. also how to be alive, pay attention, fall in love, find god. it goes in reverse chronological order, so we get to follow the truth as it wiggles all the way back into Oliver's earliest published poems, and waits to expand into every pore of her later work.
i read "in blackwater woods" to my cat the night before she was put to sleep two weeks ago. "to live in this world/ you must be able/ to do three things:/ to love what is mortal;/ to hold it/ against your bones/knowing your own life depends on it;/ and, when the time comes to let it go/to let it go."
Yesterday I gorged on my first feast of Mary Oliver's work, racing through three of her short books all in a day. I've started this one with determination to go a bit more slowly, but as I page through what is here, all I can think is oh, oh, oh, oh, oh! More, more, more, more, more!
I've finally finished. I took my time with this one, as it covers poetry from many stages of her life, going back to the 1960s. It's hard to assign a rating, but I can recommend it without reservation.
Wittgenstein once said "Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent." As a logico-philosophical imperative, this is also an ethical imperative. Oliver's anthology is beautiful and insightful as she is successful in expressing the inexpressible precisely because she does not try to do it. She simply describes life, and in her descriptions we begin to understand life in its competing contrasts and depths. These, it turns out, are the things we fail to learn from, and to see beauty in its na Wittgenstein once said "Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent." As a logico-philosophical imperative, this is also an ethical imperative. Oliver's anthology is beautiful and insightful as she is successful in expressing the inexpressible precisely because she does not try to do it. She simply describes life, and in her descriptions we begin to understand life in its competing contrasts and depths. These, it turns out, are the things we fail to learn from, and to see beauty in its nakedness.
Just came across Mary Oliver by chance and so glad i did.
and takes you away from the rush of modern life.
Kind of like mindfulness makes you pause and realise what really matters.
Finished this book but of course will continually re-read these great poems.
And I love her attitude about life, you can either mope around in your life or you can go forth with the ferocity of all that is splendid and real!
Tended towards the nature poetry a bit much for my taste, but these are the collected poems so these are kind of like the greatest hits.
I’m only sorry that it took her death to get me to return to Oliver’s work.
Mary Oliver is the greatest of them all. I bookmarked about 25 poems in this collection that I plan to read frequently (and already have.) She writes mainly about nature, starting with the smallest details described in the most artistic way, panning out its (and our) purpose in this world. I will say, I enjoyed the first half of this collection (poems from the '90s/'80s) significantly more than the second half (poems from the '60s/'70s).
If you've ever wanted to get into poetry but roll your eyes Mary Oliver is the greatest of them all. I bookmarked about 25 poems in this collection that I plan to read frequently (and already have.) She writes mainly about nature, starting with the smallest details described in the most artistic way, panning out its (and our) purpose in this world. I will say, I enjoyed the first half of this collection (poems from the '90s/'80s) significantly more than the second half (poems from the '60s/'70s).
and, when the time comes to let it go, let it go.
An accessible, beautiful, meaningful collection of poetry that everyone should read. Oliver has a marvelous way of writing about the natural world and situating herself (and us) within it, asking the big questions of existence. This is a collection that I will be reading for the rest of my life.
"Let us risk the wildest places, / Lest we go down in comfort, and despair."
this was the first Mary Oliver collection I've read and now I'm obsessed. she has such a talent for tying nature and our feelings towards it to life, death, spirituality, beginning and ending. these poems emptied and filled my heart too many times to count.
The other of two books I purchased after my father-in-law's passing.
When it's over, I The other of two books I purchased after my father-in-law's passing.
I can't choose a favourite, really because I enjoyed every poem. There are so many quotable and beautiful parts.
Most of them are influenced by nature which I personally really liked and thought was very fascinating.
They made me feel happy and sad at the same time. But most importantly, they made me think and reflect.
This was also the first time I've read poetry. I've never been into poetry - or at least I thought I wasn't - but apparently I was wrong. I'm glad I This was absolutely fantastic!
This was also the first time I've read poetry. I've never been into poetry - or at least I thought I wasn't - but apparently I was wrong. I'm glad I got out of my comfort zone and managed to read a bunch of poems and will most definitely continue reading poetry.
I've been on a poetry kick lately. I would have told you 3 years ago that I don't get poetry, any poetry. But lately, I can't get enough. There are a few lines in some of these poems that knocked me out. Some of my favorites are The Summer Day, The Journey, Rage, A Visitor & In Blackwater Woods (which the quote below is taken from).
none of I've been on a poetry kick lately. I would have told you 3 years ago that I don't get poetry, any poetry. But lately, I can't get enough. There are a few lines in some of these poems that knocked me out. Some of my favorites are The Summer Day, The Journey, Rage, A Visitor & In Blackwater Woods (which the quote below is taken from).
The precious poetry of Mary Oliver gets a long look in volume one of her selected poems. These are classic poems, but Oliver's work stands the test of time and stays fresh better than almost any other poet.
I thought it might have been better to be at a shorter length and go chronologically from her first poems to her later volumes, but I was pleasantly surprised at how more raw and opinionated her earlier works were. Reading those pieces at the end might be what I remember most from this.
Mary The precious poetry of Mary Oliver gets a long look in volume one of her selected poems. These are classic poems, but Oliver's work stands the test of time and stays fresh better than almost any other poet.
From "Spring": "Somewhere/a black bear/has just risen from sleep/and is staring/down the mountain./All night/in the brisk and shallow restlessness/of early spring/I think of her/her four black fists/flicking gravel/her tongue/like a red fire/touching the grass/the cold water./There is only one question:/how to love this world."
The first thing I read from Oliver was her collection "Why I Wake Early," which definitely reverberated in me. I followed that up with Dog Songs, and Thirst, and Red Bird, House of Light, and American Primitive. Few of these were compiled into this collection of poems from 1992; perhaps that is why, though I enjoyed it, I am, on the whole, lukewarm about it.
Though Oliver likes to ponder things like the soul, the spirit, higher power, prayer--things from which I tend to shy away--she does so wit The first thing I read from Oliver was her collection "Why I Wake Early," which definitely reverberated in me. I followed that up with Dog Songs, and Thirst, and Red Bird, House of Light, and American Primitive. Few of these were compiled into this collection of poems from 1992; perhaps that is why, though I enjoyed it, I am, on the whole, lukewarm about it.
I guess I would sum up Oliver's writing as only as 'religious' as a poem of hers suggests: something about humans being capable of reaching out for something all day even though they cannot actually grasp it; such, I think is her (or perhaps society's) most honest definition of a higher power. I would say that the search for a higher power is close to --gasp!--meaningless given everything right in front of us, below us, above us--tangibly so, and analytically so, and with feeling, and without fictional interjection. But that doesn't mean life, nature, our observations of it and how they are reflected in creation (both living and artificial, concocted), are in anyway meaningless. And I think if Oliver were here right now to have a discussion about it with me, we'd see eye to eye on something as simple as 'a flower is a prayer' --and the realest, truest kind.
“When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement.