Mary Oliver
Born
in Maple Heights, Ohio, The United States
September 10, 1935
Died
January 17, 2019
Website
Genre
|
Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver
—
published
2017
—
22 editions
|
|
|
A Thousand Mornings: Poems
—
published
2012
—
18 editions
|
|
|
Upstream: Selected Essays
—
published
2016
—
9 editions
|
|
|
Dog Songs: Poems
—
published
2013
|
|
|
Felicity
—
published
2015
—
11 editions
|
|
|
New and Selected Poems, Volume One
—
published
1992
—
15 editions
|
|
|
Dream Work
—
published
1986
—
18 editions
|
|
|
Blue Horses
—
published
2014
—
11 editions
|
|
|
Why I Wake Early
—
published
2004
—
16 editions
|
|
|
A Poetry Handbook
—
published
1994
—
16 editions
|
|
“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.”
―
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.”
―
“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”
―
―
Polls
What should May's "Moderator Recommends" book be?
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.
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.
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.
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.
35 total votes
Topics Mentioning This Author
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roane State Commu...: The one book I cannot live without | 21 | 153 | Sep 18, 2009 01:03PM | |
| The Seasonal Read...: Nicole's Task - Rhyme Time | 257 | 280 | Oct 19, 2009 05:10PM | |
| Book Haven: Mawgojzeta's 100 in 2011 | 28 | 129 | Sep 08, 2011 09:20AM | |
| Book Nook Cafe: Poetry - | 463 | 359 | Nov 27, 2012 07:46AM | |
| 100+ Books in 2026: Nora's 100 in 2012 | 63 | 60 | Dec 29, 2012 06:56PM | |
You'll love this ...:
New Purchases
|
908 | 251 | Dec 30, 2013 11:18AM | |
| 100+ Books in 2026: Nora's 100 in 2013 | 86 | 86 | Dec 31, 2013 11:22AM |































