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Mary Oliver

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Mary Oliver


Born
in Maple Heights, Ohio, The United States
September 10, 1935

Died
January 17, 2019

Website

Genre


Mary Jane Oliver was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her work is inspired by nature, rather than the human world, stemming from her lifelong passion for solitary walks in the wild.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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Average rating: 4.32 · 259,950 ratings · 33,943 reviews · 109 distinct worksSimilar authors
Devotions: The Selected Poe...

4.55 avg rating — 32,396 ratings — published 2017 — 22 editions
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A Thousand Mornings: Poems

4.20 avg rating — 32,599 ratings — published 2012 — 18 editions
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Upstream: Selected Essays

4.16 avg rating — 26,485 ratings — published 2016 — 9 editions
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Dog Songs: Poems

4.25 avg rating — 20,045 ratings — published 2013
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Felicity

4.27 avg rating — 16,418 ratings — published 2015 — 11 editions
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New and Selected Poems, Vol...

4.54 avg rating — 14,785 ratings — published 1992 — 15 editions
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Dream Work

4.35 avg rating — 14,849 ratings — published 1986 — 18 editions
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Blue Horses

4.28 avg rating — 12,694 ratings — published 2014 — 11 editions
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Why I Wake Early

4.40 avg rating — 9,557 ratings — published 2004 — 16 editions
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A Poetry Handbook

4.23 avg rating — 9,810 ratings — published 1994 — 16 editions
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More books by Mary Oliver…
Quotes by Mary Oliver  (?)
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“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
Mary Oliver

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
Mary Oliver

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”
Mary Oliver

Polls

What should May's "Moderator Recommends" book be?

The Golden Ball And Other Stories by Agatha Christie
The Golden Ball And Other Stories
Agatha Christie

A sterling collection of short stories featuring Poirot and others, The Golden Ball and Other Stories is a riveting compendium of shocking secrets, dastardly crimes, and brilliant detection—a showcase of Dame Agatha at her very best.
Is it a gesture of goodwill or a sinister trap that lures Rupert St. Vincent and his family to a magnificent estate?
How desperate is Joyce Lambert, a destitute young widow whose only recourse is to marry a man she despises? W
hat unexpected circumstance stirs old loyalties in Theodora Darrell, an unfaithful wife about to run away with her lover?
In this collection of short stories, the answers are as unexpected as they are satisfying. The Queen of Mystery takes bizarre romantic entanglements, supernatural visitations, and classic murder to inventive new heights.
 
  12 votes 34.3%

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Ken Kesey

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy – the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.
 
  11 votes 31.4%

Maus I A Survivor's Tale My Father Bleeds History (Maus, #1) by Art Spiegelman
Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
Art Spiegelman

The first installment of the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel acclaimed as “the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust” (Wall Street Journal) and “the first masterpiece in comic book history” (The New Yorker).

A brutally moving work of art—widely hailed as the greatest graphic novel ever written—Maus recounts the chilling experiences of the author’s father during the Holocaust, with Jews drawn as wide-eyed mice and Nazis as menacing cats.

Maus is a haunting tale within a tale, weaving the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father into an astonishing retelling of one of history's most unspeakable tragedies. It is an unforgettable story of survival and a disarming look at the legacy of trauma.
 
  6 votes 17.1%

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

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.

“No matter where one starts reading, Devotions offers much to love, from Oliver's exuberant dog poems to selections from the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Primitive, and Dream Work, one of her exceptional collections. Perhaps more important, the luminous writing provides respite from our crazy world and demonstrates how mindfulness can define and transform a life, moment by moment, poem by poem.” —The Washington Post

“It’s as if the poet herself has sidled beside the reader and pointed us to the poems she considers most worthy of deep consideration.” —Chicago Tribune

Throughout her celebrated career, Mary Oliver has touched countless readers with her brilliantly crafted verse, expounding on her love for the physical world and the powerful bonds between all living things. Identified as "far and away, this country's best selling poet" by Dwight Garner, she now returns with a stunning and definitive collection of her writing from the last fifty years.

Carefully curated, these 200 plus poems feature Oliver's work from her very first book of poetry, No Voyage and Other Poems, published in 1963 at the age of 28, through her most recent collection, Felicity, published in 2015. This timeless volume, arranged by Oliver herself, showcases the beloved poet at her edifying best. Within these pages, she provides us with an extraordinary and invaluable collection of her passionate, perceptive, and much-treasured observations of the natural world.
 
  6 votes 17.1%

35 total votes
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