From Dog Songs (2013) is a heartwarming collection of poems that will resonate with readers who love dogs. Oliver wrote with deep affection for her dogs and devoted a handful to Percy ‘our new dog, named for the beloved poet.’ I’d like to believe she achieved this and if her poetry is any testament to a life lived, then it was a life well lived. If you haven’t read Mary Oliver before, definitely do so as soon as possible. Even those who don’t usually read poetry tend to love her. Mary Oliver achieved great popularity but also great depth of heart and will live on as one of the greats of our time. Growing up in Ohio, Oliver said in one of her rare interviews that she ‘ felt those first important connections, those first experiences being made with the natural world rather than with the social world.’ Perhaps for this reason much of her poetry uses the natural world as the lens through which she peers into the human heart and mind. At 17, Oliver would befriend Norma, the sister to poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, and spend most of a decade organizing St. Vincent Millay’s papers while working for her estate. She attended Ohio State University and Vassar College without finishing a degree, but once her first collection of poetry came out her career as a poet was well under way and she would later teach while working as a poet-in residence at several colleges before finishing her career as Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College. Her collections are also highly decorated, winning the Pulitzer Prize for American Primitive as well as the National Book Award for New and Selected Poems While at the St. Vincent Millay estate she would meet Molly Malone Cook, who would become her life-long partner as well as agent until Molly passed in 2005. Molly had previously owned a bookstore where she employed a young John Waters before he became a celebrated filmmaker and the couple maintained a friendship with him for the remainder of their lives. Though my favorite anecdote is that, while working as Mary’s agent, whenever a call came in for her, Molly would just pretend to be her on the phone and eventually editors just came to accept her as the same as actually speaking to Mary.

Devotions, The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver by Mary Oliver Devotions, The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver by Mary Oliver

It has been six months since I last read Mary Oliver’s poems. This past week as the weight of work bore down on me, I sought refuge in her verse, and read a couple each evening. MARY OLIVER ® is the registered trademark and service mark of NW Orchard LLC in the United States and various foreign countries. I began my time with these poems while in the high hills, in a sunny meadow brimming with daisies and birdsong and surrounded by deodars stretching out to meet the sky—so you see how I felt these verses, completely entangled in the way in which Mary Oliver wrote, her unsophisticated but ecstatic dispensing of hope like a clear and sweet stream set never to run out.Ordinarily I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable.

Devotions.pdf | DocDroid Devotions.pdf | DocDroid

Oliver’s poems in the opening sections of the book, beginning in her old age, contemplate the meaning of life and the way to find joy within it. The first poem presented in Devotions, from Oliver’s last original collection, Felicity, begins by asking, “Why do people keep asking to see / God’s identity papers / when the darkness opening into morning / is more than enough?” (1-4). As a thesis statement through which to begin the entire collection, it is a powerful one: the natural world, Oliver says, is proof of the divine. For the rest of the book, she presents the lessons she has learned from nature. Beginning with her first book in 1963, Mary Oliver’s poetry has been a touchstone for understanding our world and ourselves. She described her work as loving the world. Her poems capture the human spirit and nature’s complexity with wonder and awe. Starting with an openness to the teachings contained in the smallest of moments, Mary Oliver is a determined explorer of the mysteries of our daily experience. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver presents a personal selection of her best work in this definitive collection spanning more than five decades of her esteemed literary career. There is a constancy or fidelity in nature elegantly communicated in my favorite poem in this collection:Of course, much has been said of Oliver's work—that it is too simple, or too naïve, or that its cadence derives not from metre but from a sense of harmony that many of us have been too dulled to attempt to feel. The critics can relax: Oliver herself did not want to live forever, only to be remembered if at all; as she says in one of the poems included in this collection; as "a bride married to amazement". And that she was. That we all can feel when we go out seeking the world through her words. From where I stand, Devotions is a wonderful place to start. The subject of these poems included the slippery green frog, stones on the beach, blueberries, a vulture’s wings, and the gorgeous bluebird. Reading the poems is like going on a nature ramble with her and seeing what we often take for granted with new eyes.

Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver - Goodreads Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver - Goodreads

words bestow a brave dogma of openness with the universe, the perils of existence, and the undefinable devotions shared between one another: In the poem, Evidence, Oliver reflected that memory can either be 'a golden bowl, or a basement without light' From A Thousand Mornings (2012) is a meditative ensemble of ten poems whose dominant subject is water, be it the sea or the River Ganges. Other poems contain Oliver’s reflections on the approach of winter and her own Life Story against the infinite cycle in nature’s diurnal ebb and flow. A collection of poems to dip in and out of, as the spirit moves. Much of the natural world Oliver describes is unfamiliar to me: it was often difficult to see what she was seeing. But feel what she was feeling? Emphatically yes. Oliver's poems succeed beautifully in conveying what it felt like to see what she saw. It has been a month since I last read from this devotional of poems. It is good to hear Mary Oliver’s voice again. It is always refreshing to see the world through her eyes.Now here's the first verse of a poem the title of which is a spoiler. Please, Ms Oliver, could you not have let us try to "pay attention" and figure out what you were referencing?

Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver - Google Play

White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field* is too long & too unified to present here, but know that it makes death a beautiful thing. Not to be chosen, no, but not to fear either. Newbies not interested in this whole big book might do well to start with Dog Songs. The charm of the subject of dogs & of the poems, and the mutual devotion (yes) between Oliver and her canine companions touches me, despite that I've never had a desire to own a dog. Featured, too, in Red Birds (2008) are Oliver’s thoughts about mortality, this life, amassing things, and chasing our ambitions. The following poems are the ones that stood out for me. Here are excerpts from two poems I love. The first is prose-like and too lovely not to reproduce in full. In It Was Early Oliver woke with the dawn to look at the world – the owl under the pines, the mink with his bushy tail, the soft-eared mice, the pines heavy with cones – and was astounded by the many gifts that greeted her, which prompted this thought:Poetry can describe many a feeling with astounding accuracy, but there is no describing poetry. Instead, I will attach here one of my favourite pieces from this volume, its very own, very best review: To Begin With, The Sweet Grass There is a thoughtful poem titled Storage on the joy of uncluttering. Below is a fitting response to ‘things’: Subjects like these reveal much about the way Oliver sees the world, and can therefore be considered personal poems. However, the poems in these earlier sections of the book share very few details of the poet’s life. Instead, these poems deal with the question of how to live well in general, and what it means to be human. With a few notable exceptions, the poems in the first half of the book do not offer more detail about the poet’s life than the name of her dogs and the fact that she teaches poetry. Mid-way the book, however, the poem “Flare” takes on the subject of Oliver’s difficult relationship with her parents.