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At Blackwater Pond: Mary Oliver reads Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver has published fifteen volumes of poetry and five books of prose in the span of four decades, but she rarely performs her poetry in live readings. Now, with the arrival of At Blackwater Pond, Mary Oliver has given her audience what they've longed to hear: the poet's voice reading her own work. In this beautifully produced compact disc, Mary Oliver has recorded forty of her favorite poems, nearly spanning the length of her career, from Dream Work through her newest volume, New and Selected Poems, Volume Two. The package is shrink-wrapped so that the elegant clothbound audiobook can takes its place on the poetry shelf. It also includes a fifteen-page booklet with an original essay, "Performance Note," photos of the author at Blackwater Pond, and a full listing of the poems and their sources.
Listening Length: 1 hour
Listening Length: 1 hour
1 pages, Audible Audio
First published April 1, 2006
30 people are currently reading
829 people want to read
About the author
Mary Oliver
104 books8,783 followersMary 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.
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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 169 reviews
February 5, 2023
Update review —- listened to these poems again:
Audiobook….read by Mary Oliver
…..one hour
I was inspired to listen to these again today after Sara left this powerful quote from Mary Oliver
“To live in this world
you must be able
to do these things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
let it go”
“At Blackwater Pond” are beautifully recorded poems…….
….some of Mary Oliver’s favorites.
Mary Oliver touches on what matters most: love, life, loss, lessons, the magnificent elements, nature in every form, beauty….
….how the clouds have the most beautiful shapes you’ve ever seen,
….flowers sweeter than any you ever stood upon before,
….how mountains make one flutter,
….Splashes of happiness,
…. to look, to listen, to lose one’s self in daily delights,
…. She speaks of the very ordinary, common lights of the world, prayers that are made out of grass,
….questioning the soul…. and who made the world, basking in appreciation and spirituality.
I went to my own meditative spot to listen to these lovely poems, soaking in our warm fool in the garden.
They are filled with astute observations….
and beautiful.
Thank you, again Sara!
“No matter how lonely you are, the world calls to you”.
Old review:
Audiobook….read by Mary Oliver
1 hour
….white sand, an old man, villagers gathering, ocean waves, difficulties, a million flowers, bad jokes, clouds as every shape intrigue, you live your life and leave me alone, water is a question with so many things living in it, small pieces of granite, rain, music, a splash of happiness, the wise hummingbird, trees, sound of the wind, smell of the pine needles, delights from being mindful…..
Mary Oliver’s observance of the natural world is perceived through understanding and mystery > marked by having extensive life experiences.
Beautiful, meditative, reflective.
…. I needed this!
January 18, 2019
RIP, Mary Oliver, alas. Deeply sad this morning at the news. Read Mary Oliver poetry today and this weekend.
"In Blackwater Wood" concludes with three things we must learn how to do to live in this world:
"to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go."
"In Blackwater Wood" concludes with three things we must learn how to do to live in this world:
"to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go."
July 7, 2017
I love reading Mary Oliver's poems. But listening to Mary Oliver reading her poems? Bliss. There are two poems in this collection that I'll have to write down and study, like some sacred text. She lifts the clouds from my foggy vision and helps me focus on what is dear and true.
December 7, 2020
Nature poetry isn't always my thing, but I enjoyed these, especially the poems The Sun and Bone.
February 18, 2013
Mary Oliver: Poets are better than People
I have lost count of how many times I have read Mary Oliver’s At Blackbwater Pond. Her voice transforms my mood to reflective feeling like watching mist rise over her New England Pond. I listen to her voice in the recording from Audible.com. Perhaps because Oliver says the ear bone of a whale is the part of it that lasts the longest, that poem is the one I always remember. Since she has published over 30 books, and I have sought after and read more than 15 of them, I think I can make some solid statements on her. I owe that to her.
But my audio recording of At Blackwater Pond is what I listen to when I need to calm down, to quell my personal wants and heal my injuries. It is being lead on a nature hike by a mystical poet. Mary Oliver understands the way of things. Goldfinches “argue”, but then “splash and have a good time”. Peonies “break (her) heart.” Then she says something fortunate like “so this is how you swim inward, so this is how you flow outward, so this is how you pray.” People quote certain tidbits more often than others. For instance, “tell me what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life” is quoted more readily than “Roses Late Summer” that speculates about death and life saying “If I had another life... I wouldn’t mind being a rose in a field full of roses… neither would they ask if they had not been roses and then what or any other foolish question.” Different passages speak to different people at different times. That last bit really moved me yesterday, but not today.
Sometimes I just need to be with Mary Oliver. In person, the time I met her, though she was sacred, I was not as impressed in person as when I read her books. It is in the books we get the pouring of her heart and mind and soul into the body of her poetry. Her prose did not catch me so. When we write poems and write things we’d like to call poems, we are refining our words, whittling them down to perfect prayers even if we are atheists. Especially if we are atheists.
I think I am both a perfect, holy poem writing monk and a stinky, loud atheist on any given day. Unlike Mary Oliver’s roses, I don’t have multiple lives in memory to speak of. Quoting her again, “how much can the right word do,” I think the right word can do a lot. As much as wild geese or peonies. But these perfect words do not role off our tongue in a “purse of honey”.
I will let Mary Oliver finish these words since she perfects language. She speaks my mind. “In ever heart there is a coward and a procrastinator, in every heart there is a God of flowers just waiting to come out of its cloud and lift its wings.”
I have lost count of how many times I have read Mary Oliver’s At Blackbwater Pond. Her voice transforms my mood to reflective feeling like watching mist rise over her New England Pond. I listen to her voice in the recording from Audible.com. Perhaps because Oliver says the ear bone of a whale is the part of it that lasts the longest, that poem is the one I always remember. Since she has published over 30 books, and I have sought after and read more than 15 of them, I think I can make some solid statements on her. I owe that to her.
But my audio recording of At Blackwater Pond is what I listen to when I need to calm down, to quell my personal wants and heal my injuries. It is being lead on a nature hike by a mystical poet. Mary Oliver understands the way of things. Goldfinches “argue”, but then “splash and have a good time”. Peonies “break (her) heart.” Then she says something fortunate like “so this is how you swim inward, so this is how you flow outward, so this is how you pray.” People quote certain tidbits more often than others. For instance, “tell me what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life” is quoted more readily than “Roses Late Summer” that speculates about death and life saying “If I had another life... I wouldn’t mind being a rose in a field full of roses… neither would they ask if they had not been roses and then what or any other foolish question.” Different passages speak to different people at different times. That last bit really moved me yesterday, but not today.
Sometimes I just need to be with Mary Oliver. In person, the time I met her, though she was sacred, I was not as impressed in person as when I read her books. It is in the books we get the pouring of her heart and mind and soul into the body of her poetry. Her prose did not catch me so. When we write poems and write things we’d like to call poems, we are refining our words, whittling them down to perfect prayers even if we are atheists. Especially if we are atheists.
I think I am both a perfect, holy poem writing monk and a stinky, loud atheist on any given day. Unlike Mary Oliver’s roses, I don’t have multiple lives in memory to speak of. Quoting her again, “how much can the right word do,” I think the right word can do a lot. As much as wild geese or peonies. But these perfect words do not role off our tongue in a “purse of honey”.
I will let Mary Oliver finish these words since she perfects language. She speaks my mind. “In ever heart there is a coward and a procrastinator, in every heart there is a God of flowers just waiting to come out of its cloud and lift its wings.”
July 29, 2017
I can't say enough about Mary Oliver. Her soul finds the words to stir the souls of her readers.
November 22, 2017
My first exposure to the poetry of Mary Oliver. Even allowing for how much I hated her reading voice - like that of a brittle old school teacher feigning kindness and wisdom but betraying self-important grumpiness - I found these poems deeply unremarkable. I counted perhaps three interesting turns of phrase in the whole collection; the rest was dull dull dull. My one wild and precious life shall be spent avoiding any further exposure.
October 7, 2020
When I wake up in the middle of the night with anxiety level shooting up, turning to the comfort of poems, especially Mary Oliver's, is the best self care technique I have been employing these days. I listen to her kind voice with my heart pounding and my eyes still closed tightly and I am transported to the black water pond and the pinewoods. I see the herons, daisies, snow cricket and even feel the coldness of water in the pond, and then I slowly start to feel an inexplicable warmth towards everything in this life and my heart comes back to its steady rhythm again.
"Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled--
to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking
into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing--
that the light is everything--that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
And shouldn't we all? "
"Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled--
to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking
into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing--
that the light is everything--that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
And shouldn't we all? "
November 20, 2023
Even though I’ve read a couple of Oliver’s prose books, it turns out I’ve never actually read her poetry. I confess that the snippets I’ve heard others quote have always felt a bit heavy handed to me, but now that I’ve actually encountered the real, living thing I get why she’s so beloved. Hers is nature poetry that is deeply moral, in a way that sees the living world as something larger than us and demanding from us our conscience, our souls. Marvellous and gripping. I’ll be back.
December 24, 2023
You think you’re about to listen to a lovely poem about a heron or turtle or duck and then you’re crying at the inevitability of death but also how life is wild and wonderful and anyways - Mary reads this like you’re sitting next to her by the pond and you’re best friends and that is a world I’d like to live in
October 9, 2025
I listened to this audiobook as I was driving through the canyon, the vibes were immaculate.
July 24, 2016
I have listened to this CD a few times and enjoy Mary Oliver's ability to share the beauty of nature as she experiences it while walking near her home. Listening to her poetry helps me to experience my surroundings with an appreciation of the birds, the flowers, the water, and the different feelings evoked by the changing light and shadows from early morning to evening.
February 9, 2016
Ah, mostly lovely. There are a few select poems that I keep going back to again and again. Her way of facing death is honest, a bit raw, and quite real.
May 26, 2021
Can't say I'm a fan of nature poetry but Oliver somehow turns these idyllic observations into existential musings, which I greatly vibe with.
July 22, 2022
I just need to hear her sometimes.
May 22, 2025
"oh! what is that beautiful thing that just happened?!" ~Mary Oliver
Word Art. The kind of which stuns and stops observers mid-step. The kind of which takes one immediately back to the last time by a pond, the latest time out in nature, smelling colors, tasting feels and seeing sounds.
It is not a good habit to find favorites in poems, especially collections. Yet this reader was especially entranced by Peonies, as this reader has a yard full, and each beauty requires a viewing: full and thoughtful, so nothing is lost to memory after the real bloom transforms into other elements.
this collection is super short, and a lovely way to start a day. eyes will be sharpened and spirits softened.
Word Art. The kind of which stuns and stops observers mid-step. The kind of which takes one immediately back to the last time by a pond, the latest time out in nature, smelling colors, tasting feels and seeing sounds.
It is not a good habit to find favorites in poems, especially collections. Yet this reader was especially entranced by Peonies, as this reader has a yard full, and each beauty requires a viewing: full and thoughtful, so nothing is lost to memory after the real bloom transforms into other elements.
this collection is super short, and a lovely way to start a day. eyes will be sharpened and spirits softened.
June 29, 2025
3.75 got to listen to wild geese :) i like mary oliver’s poems i just hate that i should be reading them in a meadow though
April 20, 2019
Mary Oliver continues to strike my soul blow by blow with each poem she reads in this collection. With the bleak and repetitive quality of life, it is comforting to read words of empowerment, of soul-satisfying lines of inspiration drawn from nature, animals and our inner desire to experience, to see, to touch, to feel and to live more of this life. It'd be reductive to say that her poems are spiritual but they are and I'm neither religious nor do I express deep sentimentality outwardly but her words put worship as something within our hands, within our reach. And she makes me want to build a wooden house beside a stream in the middle of the woods.
An excerpt from Wild Geese motivates to find solace with what we have in limitless amount, our imagination:
"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."
In Bone, soul is compared to a pilot whale's ear bone and it's beautifully put:
"[...] it was only
two inches long
and thought: the soul
might be like this
so hard, so necessary
yet almost nothing."
and yet admitting that a "soul" is what she will never quite know:
lest we would sift it down
into fractions, and facts
certainties
and what the soul is, also
I believe I will never quite know.
Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,
but looking, and touching, and loving,
which is the way I walked on,
softly,
through the pale-pink morning light."
A perfect description of one's feeling with the arrival of rain (or anything, anyone) after its long absence in Lingering in Happiness
"After rain after many days without rain,
it stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees,
and the dampness there, married now to gravity,
falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the ground"
Mary Oliver paints with her words, her vivid descriptions of things we tend to take for granted and appreciate less, in these excerpts:
"Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air —
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?"
— from THE SWAN
"[...] and they open —
pools of lace,
white and pink —
and all day the black ants climb over them,
boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away"
— from PEONIES
"Here are the perfect
fans of the scallops,
quahogs, and weedy mussels
still holding their orange fruit —
and here are the whelks —
whirlwinds,
each the size of a fist,
but always cracked and broken —
clearly they have been traveling
under the sky-blue waves
for a long time."
— from WHELKS
She puts some questions in her poem to ponder over, they make you pause for a bit, after filling you with the utmost simplicity and yet stunning aesthetic of the world and everything that lives in it such as "And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?" then "And have you changed your life?" Also, "Have you ever been so happy in your life?", "Do the cranes crying out in the high clouds think it is all their own music?", "Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?", "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" A collection for the soul.
Audiobook Table of Contents
-Some Herons
-Wild Geese
-Beans
-The Swan
-Bone
-Hermit Crab
-Goldenrod
-I Looked Up
-The Buddha's Last Instruction
-The Kingfisher
-Bear
-Some Things, Say the Wise Ones
-Her Grave
-Mindful
-Lonely, White Fields
-Where Does the Temple Begin
-Goldfinches
-Song of the Builders
-Peonies
-Five A.M. in the Pinewoods
-The Summer Day
-The Sun
-The Snow Cricket
-Whelks
-Hum
-White Flowers
-Rice
-Little Owl Who Lives in the Orchard
-Maybe
-When Death Comes
-Lingering in Happiness
-The Ponds
-Roses, Late Summer
-The Notebook
-Daisies
-The Lily
-Kookaburras
-Marengo
-White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field
-At Blackwater Pond
An excerpt from Wild Geese motivates to find solace with what we have in limitless amount, our imagination:
"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."
In Bone, soul is compared to a pilot whale's ear bone and it's beautifully put:
"[...] it was only
two inches long
and thought: the soul
might be like this
so hard, so necessary
yet almost nothing."
and yet admitting that a "soul" is what she will never quite know:
lest we would sift it down
into fractions, and facts
certainties
and what the soul is, also
I believe I will never quite know.
Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,
but looking, and touching, and loving,
which is the way I walked on,
softly,
through the pale-pink morning light."
A perfect description of one's feeling with the arrival of rain (or anything, anyone) after its long absence in Lingering in Happiness
"After rain after many days without rain,
it stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees,
and the dampness there, married now to gravity,
falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the ground"
Mary Oliver paints with her words, her vivid descriptions of things we tend to take for granted and appreciate less, in these excerpts:
"Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air —
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?"
— from THE SWAN
"[...] and they open —
pools of lace,
white and pink —
and all day the black ants climb over them,
boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away"
— from PEONIES
"Here are the perfect
fans of the scallops,
quahogs, and weedy mussels
still holding their orange fruit —
and here are the whelks —
whirlwinds,
each the size of a fist,
but always cracked and broken —
clearly they have been traveling
under the sky-blue waves
for a long time."
— from WHELKS
She puts some questions in her poem to ponder over, they make you pause for a bit, after filling you with the utmost simplicity and yet stunning aesthetic of the world and everything that lives in it such as "And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?" then "And have you changed your life?" Also, "Have you ever been so happy in your life?", "Do the cranes crying out in the high clouds think it is all their own music?", "Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?", "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" A collection for the soul.
Audiobook Table of Contents
-Some Herons
-Wild Geese
-Beans
-The Swan
-Bone
-Hermit Crab
-Goldenrod
-I Looked Up
-The Buddha's Last Instruction
-The Kingfisher
-Bear
-Some Things, Say the Wise Ones
-Her Grave
-Mindful
-Lonely, White Fields
-Where Does the Temple Begin
-Goldfinches
-Song of the Builders
-Peonies
-Five A.M. in the Pinewoods
-The Summer Day
-The Sun
-The Snow Cricket
-Whelks
-Hum
-White Flowers
-Rice
-Little Owl Who Lives in the Orchard
-Maybe
-When Death Comes
-Lingering in Happiness
-The Ponds
-Roses, Late Summer
-The Notebook
-Daisies
-The Lily
-Kookaburras
-Marengo
-White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field
-At Blackwater Pond
December 30, 2014
We listened to this glorious book of poems one sunny day in March as we drove out Cape Cod to Provincetown, with hope of finding Blackwater Pond. Standing at an overlook, I asked an older gentleman who was walking by, and was obviously a local, if he knew where we could find Blackwater Pond. He pointed toward a distant hill, and said, "It must be one of the many ponds over that way. I don't know any of them by name, but I do know all of them by heart." Oh, poets abound in Provincetown. Although we never found our pond, we were fulfilled.
May 14, 2013
Mary Oliver is my favorite poet. Each new book awakens new joy in me. But I had been burned in the past when I got a CD where the artist read their own work. Up until this reading, I would have placed Maya Angelou readings of her poetry at the top and she is still my second favorite but Mary Oliver now holds the top title. Her readings let me see another layer sometimes which I cherish.
September 27, 2016
Nature seems to be the inspiration of Mary Oliver's poetry. I like how she uses language and I think I'll listen to this audiobook again next autumn when I'm visiting my grandfather cottage. I'll probably like it more there.
February 8, 2010
Mary's voice is soothing and relaxing, I like her cadence and soft accent.
June 11, 2012
Another great collection of her poems read by the poet herself. I will be listening to this one again and again.
October 6, 2012
What a treat to bring Mary Oliver via iPod on my walks in the Metropark . Her poems invite a deeper appreciation of nature and the gift of "Aha!" moments.
April 27, 2013
Mary Oliver reads Mary Oliver? What's not to adore?
November 10, 2015
It's wonderful. I love hearing the author read her work...much expression and passion involved. I would read this again.
January 18, 2019
Mary Oliver’s Death has hit me hard. I listened to this one on the way to the bookstore and found death to be too prevalent, but, as always, her writing is superb!
May 25, 2020
This audiobook is a beautiful sample of the ethereal poetry of Mary Oliver. Her voice is soothing and her words are transporting.
June 30, 2020
I love Oliver's poetry in general, but it was even better when read by the poet herself. This audio book is very soothing and beautiful.
April 21, 2022
Only thing better than Mary Oliver is Mary Oliver reading Mary Oliver
Displaying 1 - 30 of 169 reviews