Upstream: Selected Essays

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In the mystery and the energy of loving, we all view time's shadow upon the beloved as wretchedly as any of Poe's narrators. And this is what I learned: that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness—the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books—can re-dignify the worst-stung heart. It wants and strives, beyond that artifact part of itself, to be a true part of the composite human record—that is, not words but a reality. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong, authors of the book Unbelievable In journalism we have a word for a story that resonates, that gets passed around and talked about, that so engages or infuriates or floors its readers that they feel compelled to share it with someone else.

Now they just hold a great interest for me and her littering of classical Gothic texts in this made me so excited to continue my exploration of the genre. I was, however, pleasantly surprised that many of her essays were almost poetic because of the way she described things. I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.

For whatever reason, the heart cannot separate the world's appearance and actions from morality and valor, and the power of every idea is intensified, if not actually created, by its expression in substance. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves - we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together.

The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. She observes a spider raising her young, gives sanctuary to an injured gull, then ponders the terrible mystery of the endlessly hungry owl. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. instead, i feel sated just by having this deep resonant warmth within me that i want to nurture without giving a name for a while.

Her last books included A Thousand Mornings (2012), Dog Songs (2013), Blue Horses (2014), Felicity (2015), Upstream: Selected Essays (2016), and Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (2017). June 1, 1998, Donna Seaman, review of Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse, p. Powerful, egotistical, insinuating—its presence rises, in memory, or from the steamy river of dreams. Ostriker considered Oliver “among the few American poets who can describe and transmit ecstasy, while retaining a practical awareness of the world as one of predators and prey.For Ostriker, Dream Work is ultimately a volume in which Oliver moves “from the natural world and its desires, the ‘heaven of appetite’ . In in this exquisite collection of essays, national treasure Mary Oliver uses her poetic talent and gifts of observation to reflect on topics ranging from the beauty of the natural world, to the connectedness of all beings, to the need for solitude, and the genius of some of America's literary masters. Oliver’s poetry won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and a Lannan Literary Award for lifetime achievement . She never fails to stir us from whatever is the natural speck before our gaze to the immeasurable heaven’s dome above and beyond.

Holly Prado of the Los Angeles Times Book Review also applauded Oliver’s original voice, writing that American Primitive“touches a vitality in the familiar that invests it with a fresh intensity. I, too, turn into a dramatic sigh-swoon loser who reads Mary Oliver whenever my brain starts to get glitchy. The richness of these essays—part revelation, part instruction—will prompt readers to dive in again and again. how she wrote about whitman and poe and blake and other acclaimed poets and what they meant to hear felt so personal and amazingly written.Overfishing and climate change have transformed it into “a town of pleasure,” yet one that has for her always been “heaven. May I look down upon the wildflower and the bull thistle and the coreopsis with the greatest respect. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.