A slim, single-sitting read. Some favorite lines:"His subject was his true self, which of course was as dark and secret as anyone else's, and it was too hard--perhaps you understand--to speak or to sing it to anything or anyone but the sky." -from "The Mockingbird""Truly I try to be good but some...
Wonderful poems! I really enjoyed enjoyed the one poem where Mary addresses the reader- "If You Are Holding This Book." She describes loving to see dogs being free: "[that] of all the sights I love in this world-/ and there are plenty- very near the top of/ the list is this one: dogs without leas...
Reading Mary Oliver's poetry is like listening to Enya's music. It's all delicate and beautiful, but aside from a few star pieces, it all starts to blend together after a while. Mary Oliver's poems are beautiful for their focus on nature and spirituality, and for their simplicity, and some of her...
Much happier than I was with Thirst... here is one of my favorites:How I Go to the WoodsOrdinarily I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and thereforeunsuitable.I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirdsor hugging the old black o...
I don't usually read poetry books. But I decided to try one or two of the Goodreads Choice 2014 nominees. From the descriptions this one seemed the least angst filled. I've never been good at reading poems. I could never get the rhythms right, couldn't make sense of the forms or punctuation. ...
Thirst, a collection of forty-three new poems from the Pulitzer Prize-winner Mary Oliver, introduces two new directions in the poet's work. Grappling with grief at the death of the love of her life and partner of over forty years, the remarkable photographer Molly Malone Cook, she strives to expe...
Swan: Poems and Prose Poems The Poet Dreams of the Mountain Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.I want to climb some old gray mountain, slowly, takingthe rest of my lifetime to do it, resting often, sleepingunder the pines or, above them, on the unclothed rocks.I wa...
Have I not stood, amazed, as I consider the perfection of the morning star above the peaks of the houses, and the crowns of the trees blue in the first light? Do I not see how the trees tremble, as though sheets of water flowed over them though it is only wind, that common thing, free to everyone...
Red Bird: Poems Sometimes1.Something came upout of the dark.It wasn’t anything I had ever seen before.It wasn’t an animal or a flower,unless it was both.Something came up out of the water, a head the size of a catbut muddy and without ears.I don’t know what God is.I don’t know what death is...
Let the weeds rejoin and be prolific throughout. Let the noise of the mower be banished, hurrah! Let the path become where I choose to walk, and not otherwise established. Let the goldfinches be furnished their humble dinner....
The tide rises and falls, on ordinary not on stormy days, about nine feet. The beach here is composed of sand and glacial drift; the many-colored pebbles of this drift have been well rounded by the water’s unceasing, manipulative, glassy touch. In addition, all sorts of objects are carried here b...
In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James offers four marks of distinction that are part of a mystical experience. The first of these is that such an experience “defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words.”* All poets know such frustration gener...