White Pine: Poems and Prose Poems

by Mary Oliver

In her first collection since winning the National Book Award in 1993, Mary Oliver writes of the silky bonds between every person and the natural world, of the delight of writing, of the value of silence. “[Her] poems are...as genuine, moving and implausible as the first caressing breeze of spring” (New York Times).

Genres: Poetry, Nature, Nonfiction, Animals, Adult, LGBT, Lesbian

66 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 1994

About the author

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.

Reviews

[cameron]

*i don’t rate poetry* I would give mary oliver my first born. i’m not joking. anyways. a beautiful touching collection on nature, and death, and love. also i keep getting jumped scared by every poetry collection i read mentioning achilles and Patroclus.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plenty of interesting bits. But so much more that I just don't get that I feel frustrated. It's me; it's not Oliver, but I still can't rate it as highly as I'm sure it deserves....

I recommend you check out *Beside the Waterfall* but bear in mind that the format/ shape doesn't reproduce well, so when you see it some blogs it's wrong. Nine verses, each line of each verse indented, so it's rhythmic pennants....

"In Pobiddy, Georgia" a very old woman at a cemetery needs help from her descendents when it's time to go: "Clearly she is blind, and clearly she can't rise, but they lift her, like a child, and lead her away, across the graves, as though, as old as anything could ever be, she was, finally, perfectly finished, perfectly heartbroken, perfectly wild."

[Regina Shelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first time I read a Mary Olive poem, someone had included At Blackwater Pond inside a card they sent me. I opened the card, read the poem, and was struck with such a profound, deep ringing of beauty and truth I instantly wept.

The husband does not get it. He's not much for being outside, either. I guess you either get it or you don't.

To me, Oliver's work is almost like Haiku, incredible truths distilled down into a sharp edge that cuts deep into your psyche. She is a naturalist, and observer, a mystic, deeply in love with life and the earth and the mystery.

Read it. And if not this, anything else she's written. It doesn't matter.

I hope you're lucky enough to get it.

[Meredith is a hot mess · Rating 5 out of 5]

There isn't anything in this world but mad love. Not in this world. No tame love, calm love, mild love, no so-so love. And of course, no reasonable love.

Something touched me, lightly, like a knife-blade. I felt I was bleeding, though just a little, a hint. Inside I flared hot, then cold. I thought of you. Whom I love, madly.

from the poem, March

A few excerpts:



Then it turned and vanished. In shyness, perhaps. Or simply because we get no more than such dreamy chances to look upon the real world. The great door opens a crack, a hint of the truth is given--so bright it is almost a death, a joy we can't bear--and then it is gone.

-from December

What I want to know, please, is
what is possible, and what is not.
If it is not, then I am for it.
My heart is out of its flesh-phase.
I am done with all of it, the habits, the patience.
Whoever I was, it is growing hazy and forgettable.

Whoever I am, it is for mere appearance's sake.
It is for coin, and foolishness,
and I am thinking of something better.
All morning it has been raining.
In the language of the garden, this is happiness.
The tissues perk and shine.
Truly this is the poem worth keeping.
A mossy house anyone with any sense would enter
as soon as the soul begins
to desire the impossible.

-from The Garden


This is, I think,
what holiness is:
the natural world,
where every moment is full

of the passion to keep moving.
Inside every mind
there's a hermit cave
full of light,

full of snow,
full of concentration.
I've knelt there,
and so have you,

hanging on
to what you love,
to what is lovely.
The lake's

shining sheets
don't make a ripple now,
and the stars
are going off to their blue sleep,

but the words are in place--
and the fish leaps, and leaps again
from the plush of the poem,
that breathless space.

-from At The Lake


but once,
years ago,
in some kind of rapturous mistake
the deer did not run away

but walked toward me
and touched my hands--
and I have been, ever since,
separated from my old, comfortable life

of experience and deduction--
I have been, ever since,
exalted--
and even now,

though I miss the world
I would not go back--
I would not be anywhere else
but stalled in the happiness

of the miracle--
every morning
I stroll out into the fields
I believe in everything--

I believe in anything--
even if the deer are wild again
I am still under the dark trees,
they are still walking toward me.

-from The Pinewoods



Favorite poems:



Yes! No!

In Pobiddy, Georgia

The Pinewoods

Mockingbirds

Grass

At the Lake

August

The Garden

The Hottest Day

Fletcher Oak

Deer in the Meadow

December

March

[Natasha M. Nurse, Esq. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I LOVE poetry and I was shocked at how disconnected I was when reading this book 🤯 This was not my jam 😔

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. A second reading may bring it to five stars.

Some favorite excerpts:

From In Blackwater Woods:

8. The Garden

What I want to know, please, is
what is possible, and what is not.
If it is not, then I am for it.
My heart is out of its flesh-phase.
I am done with all of it, the habits, the patience.
Whoever I was, it is growing hazy and forgettable.

Whoever I am, it is for mere appearance's sake.
It is for coin, and foolishness,
and I am thinking of something better.
All morning it has been raining.
In the language of the garden, this is happiness.
The tissues perk and shine.
Truly this is the poem worth keeping.
A mossy house anyone with any sense would enter
as soon as the soul begins
to desire the impossible.

I have never felt so young.

11.

Each moment has been so slow and so full
and so drenched in sweetness and my life
has gone by so fast

and, December

Then the deer stepped from the woods. It walked from the shadows under the trees into a clear space. Antlers sprang from its brow, each with five or six tines. From the antlers, from each tine, green leaves were growing, as if from the branches of a tree.

The deer stood without moving, brutish and graceful as deer alive in the daylight, except that its heavy, elaborate head was carrying, upon the usual curvatures of horn, these branches, this fountain of leaves.

Then it turned and vanished. In shyness, perhaps. Or simply because we get no more than such dreamy chances to look upon the real world. The great door opens a crack, a hint of the truth given - so bright it is almost a death, a joy we can't bear - and then it is gone.

[hope h. · Rating 5 out of 5]

reading mary oliver to feel the entire span of human emotions in 55 pages!!
struggling to pick a favorite from this one but i really liked in blackwater woods, 3. teeth:

"out of my desire to be
related to my sleek young dog, i ate
her puppy teeth, all of them i could find, white and
crisp, each one rolled in a
pad of bread. i was not, consequently,
related to her. but i say this:
in any life some failures are nevertheless
achievements, and this one, in mine, is by no means
the least. god help us if
we make this world only out of bone, and not the greater weight
of admiration, whimsy,
fierce and unspeakable love."

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘May’ my fav💘💘💘💘

[Amelia Lea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful imagery, as always, with so many varieties of language- fluid, harsh, light, lovely, always lovely.

[Lex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty sure I own all of Mary Oliver’s work now hehe; I bought this book specifically for the poem ‘Hummingbirds’ (the last two stanzas resonate with me in unfathomable ways).

Such a gorgeous command of language and imagery, clean and lovely as usual.

[Charlotte Correiro]

perfect for the turning of the seasons! tracing from may to march among other (non-month) poems, favorites being ‘in blackwater woods’ (god help us if we make this world only out of bone), ‘yes! no!’ (to pay attention, this is our endless and proper work), and ‘march’ (a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving)

[Kendall McClain · Rating 4 out of 5]

"To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work"!! Yeah. Super marshy in a great way.

[Miranda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Woodsy and dreamy.

[Tanja Mavie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I say this about Mary Oliver every time I finish a book of hers: I would carve her name in a tree I love, I would write it in ink under my skin; I would tell the moon and the stars about her, I do tell the moon and the stars about her, whispering poems into the dark, like angels, rising above me. And I come back to her words, again and again and again, like a lifeline, like a home.
White Pine was no exception, in fact, it's one of my favorite collections so far.

[Isaac Jensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not my favorite Mary Oliver (oh to be able to read America Primitive for the first time again), but reading these poems still manages to calm the tumult in my soul if only for a moment, and that is no small blessing.

Favorite poems: Porcupine, The Pinewoods, In Blackwater Woods, Rumor of Moose in the Long Twilight of New Hampshire, and Wings.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I have read that, in Africa, when the body of an antelope, which all its life ate only leaves and grass and drank nothing but wild water, is first opened, the fragrance is almost too sweet, too delicate, too beautiful to be borne."

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Oliver is something more than just a poet; perhaps poet/shaman may be a more apt description. Each poem in this astonishing collection casts a spell. The book is a web of magic, but it is not the work of a magician. Mary Oliver writes only pure, beautiful truth, here handing the reader the world in fifty-five pages. It is not necessary that the reader know this is not an easy thing to do. It is enough to quietly gasp at the simple grandeur of each poem.

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Mary Oliver's poetry and often read a poem or two before falling asleep. It transports me back into the forests of my childhood years.

[Maya Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

no surprise i enjoyed this. i love mary oliver <3 (4.25 ⭐️)

[Zoe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my favorite collection of Oliver's; it felt just a little too abstract and scattered in its focus, though it of course centers on Oliver's connection with nature.

[Kelsy McQuide · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, how I love Mary Oliver. Her love of nature and way with words makes for such a gorgeous collection of poems. She has a way of seeing the beauty in every part of the natural world, even the gruesome and unkind. I love seeing the world through her eyes.

[Jarrod · Rating 5 out of 5]

every time i read mary oliver i’m reminded not only that life is so fleeting and can be so beautiful but also that i need to get outside more

[Gabriella Cabrera]

I went through my Goodreads and apparently this is the 13th book of Mary Oliver’s that I’ve read! I’ve always found solace in her poetry, and find myself turning to her when I need comfort. I’m grateful for her work!

[ceyda · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I died, and was born in the spring;
I found you, and loved you, again.“

“After excitement we are so restful. When the thumb of fear lifts, we are so alive.“

“I think, what love does to us
is a Gordian knot,
it’s that complicated.“

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I savored this collection, which my mom bought me for my birthday this year. From the Yes! No! poem at the beginning ("Imagination is better than a sharp instrument./ To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.") to the melancholic March ("There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But who wants easier?" ) the poems are arresting, full of indelible images, the frank honesty of nature (animals kill and eat one another every day), and humor (like the one where she gets down on her knees and has a conversation with a toad).
I'll be re-reading this every year, if I'm lucky.

[Paul Cannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely wonderful poetry, as to be expected.

[Amy Adrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

“ but I know this: it’s posture – of looking, to the last possible moment, back into the world – made me want to sing something joyous and tender”

[Darrin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Oliver has the ability to describe, in perhaps as little as one or two lines, some quality of the natural world that to me is only a fleeting feeling or mood when I am out in the countryside or in the forest. I am sometimes astonished at how she is able to put into words of either poetry or prose, what, to my mind, are ineffable qualities.

In the poem, Hummingbirds, for example, she describes the act of climbing a tree and realizing she has disturbed a hummingbird nest...

The female, and the two chicks,
each no bigger than my thumb,
scattered,
shimmering

in their pale-green dresses;
then they rose, tiny fireworks,
into the leaves
and hovered;....

Later in the poem, she describes the three birds...

like three tosses of silvery water,
they were gone.

I read her poems and marvel at her use of language to describe simple things.

In many of her poems, she also interjects moments of deep contemplation or introspection....

Alone,
in the crown of the tree,

I went to China,
I went to Prague;
I died, and was born in the spring;
I found you, and loved you, again...

So there she sits, daydreaming in the tree, having disturbed the hummingbird nest and ends the poem having also disturbed her own inner thoughts...

Likely I visited all
the shimmering, heart-stabbing
questions without answers
before I climbed down.

If only I could put into words my inner musings the way Mary Oliver does. Her poetry's biggest appeal to me is this introversion and obvious love and appreciation of the natural world. When I have "shimmering, heart-stabbing questions without answers" my first go-to place is my backyard underneath the oak tree, sitting in silence.

[Dan Gobble · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all-time favorite images comes from this poem, a bird playing with a feather:

June

A single swallow glides in the air above the water. Next to it something hovers, thin and white. It flies too—or is it floating? It vanishes. It appears again, a little smaller than the bird.

Now the bird approaches land. Now it is over the beach itself. The floating object is also over the beach. A feather! The swallow snaps the feather from the air and holds it in its beak while it takes three or four rapid strokes forward. Then it lets the feather go, and dives away.

The feather pauses on the updraft, then begins to descend. The bird turns, flows back, glides above and beneath it. The feather tumbles erratically. With a plunge the swallow snaps it from the air and flies on, and then, again, lets it go.

All of this is repeated maybe a dozen times. Finally the swallow ignores the feather, which drifts toward the berms of wild roses, between the dunes and the sea. The swallow climbs higher into the air, blue shoulders pumping hard. Then it swings, glides, turns toward the sea, is gone.

(Mary Oliver, White Pine: Poems and Prose Poems; A Harvest Original-Harcourt, Inc.: Orlando, FL; 1994; p. 12)

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another of Mary Oliver's collections that soars. She has the ability to compress into so few words what she notices about both the created world around us and the world of the heart that obviously overlaps with it. And her poems are a constant reminder to pay attention to life and those we love.

The swan, for all his pomp, his robes of glass and pteals, wants only to be allowed to live on the nameless pond. The catbrier is without fault. The water thrushes, down among the sloppy rocks, are going crazy with happiness. Imagination is better than a shrap instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. (from "Yes, No," p.8)