Dream Work

by Mary Oliver

Dream Work, a collection of forty-five poems, follows both chronologically and logically Mary Oliver's American Primitive, which won for her the Pulitzer Prize for the finest book of poetry published in 1983 by an American poet. The depth and diversity of perceptual awareness-so steadfast and radiant in American Primitive-continue in Dream Work. Additionally, she has turned her attention in these poems to the solitary and difficult labors of the spirit-to accepting the truth about one's personal world, and to valuing the triumphs while transcending the failures of human relationships. Whether by way of inheritance-as in her poem about the Holocaust-or through a painful glimpse into the present-as in "Acid," a poem about an injured boy begging in the streets of Indonesia-the events and tendencies of history take on a new importance also. More deeply than in her previous volumes, the sensibility behind these poems has merged with the world. Mary Oliver's willingness to be joyful continues, deepened by self-awareness, by experience, and by choice.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Classics, Nature, LGBT, Queer, Adult

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

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

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once in his (or her) career, a poet may publish a perfect book, a book that expresses the author’s range of themes and depth of artistry with an unparalleled completeness. When people new to the poet’s ask you what book to read first, you unhesitatingly pick this book.

Then comes the book after that, the book which inevitably disappoints. It is muddy, lacking in clarity. It is somehow both limited and excessive—a sort of negative miracle. Worse than that, it isn’t the book you love most.

Funny though. Wait a few years, and you may find the second collection much better than you remembered. It may not be perfect like the first, but it now strikes you as deeper, darker, more ambitious. Sure, it lacks balance, but it is strives for greater things.

James Wright is my favorite Ohio poet. His perfect book is The Branch Will Not Break, his next book We Shall Gather at the River. Mary Oliver is my second favorite Ohio poet. Her perfect book is American Primitive, her next book is this book: Dreamwork.

As I said in my review of American Primitive, it was in this book that Mary finally learned how to include her own passionate presence as an integral part of the world of nature she had always described with an observant eye.

In Dreamwork, however, Mary discovers that merely including herself is not enough. Her self—wounded by abuse, alive to love—demands to be heard just as emphatically as the voice of the crow. She, like the turtle, is “a part of the pond she lives in.”

Here are a few of her more personal, more human poems:

WILD GEESE

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 clear 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.



A VISITOR

My father, for example,
who was young once
and blue-eyed,
returns
on the darkest of nights
to the porch and knocks
and if I answer
I must be prepared
for his waxy face,
for his lower lip
swollen with bitterness.
And so, for a long time,
I did not answer,
but slept fitfully
between the hours of rapping.
But finally there came the night
when I rose out of my sheets
and stumbled down the hall.
The door fell open

and I knew I was saved
and could bear him,
with even the least of his dreams
frozen inside him,
and the meanness gone.
And I greeted him and asked him
into the house,
and lit the flame,
and looked into his blank eyes
in which at last
I saw what a child must love,
I saw what love might have done
had we loved in time.



SUNRISE

You can
die for it—
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us. Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.

[chloe · Rating 5 out of 5]

reading mary oliver feels like coming home 🤍

“Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.”

[Dannii Elle · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I forgive them
their unhappiness,
I forgive them
for walking out of the world.

But I don’t forgive them
for turning their faces away,
for taking off their veils
and dancing for death —

for hurtling
toward oblivion
on the sharp blades
of their exquisite poems, saying:
this is the way.


I was, of course, all that time
coming along
behind them, and listening
for advice.


And the man who merely
washed Michelangelo’s brushes, kneeling
on the damp bricks, staring
every day at the colors pouring out of them,
lived to be a hundred years old."

I think I just found perfection.

Oliver's collection of poems deal with disparate topics and yet every single one impressed me with their beauty of imagery, honesty of thought, and depth of emotion. The snippet above was ripped from my favourite but I could have posted stanzas at random and they would still be some of the most eloquent and emotional I had ever had the pleasure of reading.

This is the type of poetry that promotes the pure and unadulterated soaring of the heart. This entire anthology is visceral; rawness and grace combining in a fever dream of feeling, with poised perfection and lyrical beauty in abundance.

[Julie G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy, holy, holy.

This collection made a fierce little Chihuahua out of me. I'm barking, I'm up on your shins.

I'm licking your knees; I'm scratching. I just nipped you.

I see you backing away and I say: it may be poetry, but you should never ignore my wagging tail.

This one's right up there, with EE Cummings's Tulips and Chimneys, Ray Carver's Ultramarine, Langston Hughes's The Weary Blues and Yehuda Amichai's Open Closed Open.

In three words I will describe it: Incendiary. Resplendent. Transcendent.



Look at you, Mary Oliver, shouldering your way past the big boys to stand tall in their court.

Terrifying me, in all of your glory.

I love Orion, his fiery body, his ten stars,
his flaring points of reference, his shining dogs.

“It is winter,” he says.
“We must eat,” he says. Our gloomy

and passionate teacher.


                                    Miles below

in the cold woods, with the mouse and the owl, 

with the clearness of water sheeted and hidden,

with the reason for the wind forever a secret,

he descends and sits with me, his voice

like the snapping of bones.


                                    Behind him

everything is so black and unclassical; behind him
I don’t know anything, not even

my own mind.


[Carolyn Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The collection felt unbelievably resonant and personal as if Mary Oliver was revealing the secrets of her past and the inner workings of her heart.
Reading her poetry feels like such a gift, and I will cherish each and every one of her words forever.


Wild Geese by 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.

[Léa · Rating 5 out of 5]

mary oliver the writer that you are !!!!!

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my first taste of Mary Oliver's works, and although I enjoyed some of the poetry, I found I couldn't resonate to all of it, which to be honest, is often the way with a collection of poetry. I liked that the primary theme of the poetry is nature and animals, and as a lover of both of those, some in particular really moved me.

Whispers, by Mary Oliver;


Have you ever
tried to
slide into
the heaven of sensation and met

you know not what
resistance but it
held you back? have you ever
turned on your shoulder

helplessly, facing
the white moon, crying
let me in? have you dared to count
the months as they pass and the years

while you imagined pleasure,
shining like honey, locked in some
secret tree? have you dared to feel
the isolation gathering

intolerably and recognized
what kinds of explosions can follow
from an intolerable condition? have you
walked out in the mornings

wherever you are in the world to consider
all those gleaming and reasonless lives
that flow outward and outward, easily, to the last
moment the bulbs of their lungs,

their bones and their appetites,
can carry them? oh, have you
looked wistfully into
the flushed bodies of the flowers? have you stood,

staring out over the swamps, the swirling rivers
where the birds like tossing fires
flash through the trees, their bodies
exchanging a certain happiness

in the sleek, amazing
humdrum of nature's design-
blood's heaven, spirit's haven, to which
you cannot belong?


Some of the poems left me feeling a little empty, with mild confusion, and they felt unfinished. I guess I was expecting a little more. This is definitely isn't the best poetry collection I've read, but there were a few gems in here, all the same.


Members of the Tribe, by Mary Oliver;


Ahead of me
they were lighting their fires
in the dark forests
of death.

Should I name them?
Their names make a long branch of sound.

You know them.

***

I know
death is the fascinating snake
under the leaves, sliding
and sliding; I know
the heart loves him too, can't
turn away, can't

break the spell. Everything

wants to enter the slow thickness,
aches to be peaceful finally and at any cost.

Wants to be stone.

***

That time
I wanted to die
somebody
was playing the piano
in the room with me.

It was Mozart.
It was Beethoven.
It was Bruckner.

In the kitchen
a man with one ear
was painting a flower.

***

Later,
in the asylum,
I began to pick through the red rivers
of confusion;

I began to take apart
the deep stitches
of nightmares.

That was good, human work.

This had nothing to do with laying down a path of words
that could throttle,
or soften,
the human heart.

Meanwhile,
Yeats, in love and anger,
stood beside his fallen friends;
Whitman kept falling
through the sleeve of ego.

In the back fields,
beyond the locked windows,
a young man who couldn't live long and knew it
was listening to a plain brown bird
that kept singing in the deep leaves,
that kept urging from him
some wild and careful words.
You know that
important and eloquent defense
of sanity.

***

I forgive them
their unhappiness,
I forgive them
for walking out of the world.

But I don't forgive them
for turning their faces away,
for taking off their veils
and dancing for death --

for hurtling
toward oblivion
on the sharp blades
of their exquisite poems, saying:
this is the way.

***

I was of course, all that time
coming along
behind them, and listening
for advice.

***

And the man who merely
washed Michaelangelo's brushes, kneeling
on the damp bricks, staring
every day at the colors pouring out of them,

lived to be a hundred years old.


Would I read Mary Oliver again? Yes, I believe I would.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was good for my soul. A few of the poems are absolute treasures, so simple yet powerful that I read them four or five times over. Among those I would number “Morning Poem,” “Wild Geese” and “The Moths,” all of which I plan to read several more times, and maybe even try to memorize, before I return this book to the library. Usually Oliver’s way into wisdom is through nature, and the poems’ voice is as often “you” as it is “I,” making these universal sentiments that I can’t imagine anyone failing to find of comfort. I much preferred this to my first Oliver collection, Felicity.

Some favorite lines:

“I wanted / to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know, / whoever I was, I was // alive / for a little while.” (from “Dogfish”)

“have you dared to count / the months as they pass and the years // while you imagined pleasure, / shining like honey, locked in some / secret tree?” (from “Whispers”)

“For years and years I struggled / just to love my life. And then // the butterfly / rose, weightless, in the wind. / ‘Don’t love your life / too much,’ it said, // and vanished into the world.” (from “One or Two Things”)

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

You don't want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don't want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it's the same old story--
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.

Mostly I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world.

―from Dogfish

[persephone ☾ · Rating 4 out of 5]

might be kind of in love with Mary Oliver

[Hallie · Rating 5 out of 5]

re-read of one of my fav collections <3

“I believed in the world. Oh, I wanted to be easy in the peopled kingdoms, to take my place there, but there was none that I could find shaped like me.”

“Every morning the world is created. Under the orange sticks of the sun the heaped ashes of the night turn into leaves again.”

—————————-

2025 reread:

Each time I read this collection a new poem sticks out to me.

“I wanted
the past to go away, I wanted to leave it, like another country; I wanted my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;”

-From “Dogfish”

A subject that many people struggle with; healing from the past. Reading this opening poem, it felt like a possibility.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

SUNRISE

You can
die for it —
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.

[Eliza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some poems were absolutely lovely, whereas others weren't favorites of mine. Still a well written collection of poetry!

[Z. · Rating 5 out of 5]

You don't want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don't want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it's the same old story--
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.

Mostly I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world.
-from "Dogfish"

----
This was one of those "right place, right time" reads for me. I've been a casual fan of Mary Oliver for years, but Dream Work came to me in a period of change and questioning and spoke to me where I was. It has all of Oliver's trademarks--the reverent love for nature and the body, the deceptive simplicity of language and meter, the abiding preoccupation with both stillness and flux--but it also seems somewhat darker, or at least more uncertain, than the other books of hers I've read. I get the impression Oliver was doing a lot of emotional growing as she wrote these poems, coming to terms with something difficult in her life or herself, and for that reason it was the perfect thing to read in my own season of growth and uncertainty. But I don't want to oversell the darkness here; these poems are often challenging, and sometimes painful, but the thing I felt most--the thing I always feel most when reading Mary Oliver--was inspiration. Not the insipid inspiration of Hallmark movies and motivational platitudes, not the fleeting sort of inspiration often synonymous with cheerfulness or excitement, but the hard-won (and therefore more meaningful) inspiration that comes when we accept the task ahead of us for what it is, or emerge from a shadowy period of testing into the light of new revelation.

A book I expect to cherish for a long time to come.

[boxer_dogs_dance · Rating 4 out of 5]

These poems tend to be beautiful and uplifting. Very good for a certain mood.

[Praveen · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Don’t bother me
I have just
been born.” -Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. And Yes. She talks about nature. There is not much of the dubiety on my mind after having read her first book of poems in my life. I read two major award-winning woman poets for the first time this year; Louise Glück and Mary Oliver.

I can say that Mary observes in and around. She observes with clarity. She observes both piffling and salient. She is romantic and she is harsh as well. I will not use the word “recherché” for her poetic craft as it seems to me she is very explicit in her approach at least in this book. I loved all the poems in this collection. And along with Glück, this poetess gave me the dose of my poetic repose of this year. I am keen to jump over to her other books, especially the Pulitzer -prize-winning work “American Primitive”, and I will definitely be receiving that book with high expectations.

In the eyes of Maxine Kumin Oliver was “a patroller of wetlands in the same way that Thoreau was an inspector of snowstorms.” When I read this comparison, my expression went from an intent observer to a cheerful grinner (no idea if this word even exists, but I grinned) in the blink of an eye. I recalled my failed attempt to read Walden, four years back but I remember reading somewhere then, about this association of Henry David Thoreau with snowstorms. Thoreau even wanted the officials to pay him for his job of observing and writing about snowstorms, jokingly.

At the beginning of her poetic craft in this book, she declares from the vantage point of her craft. See the attitude…

“You don’t want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen
to the enormous waterfalls of the Sun”

In the ‘morning poem,’ she says,

“each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,
whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.”

In one poem she beautifully expressed the growth of trillium; how the Hillside grew white with the wild Trillium. She speaks about how the marsh hawks which are long-tailed and have yard-wide wings glide just above the Rough plush of Marshlands. And once she heard a scream,

“Something screamed
from the fringes of the swamp
It was Banyan,
the old merchant.
It was the hundred-legged
Tree, walking again”

In a poem, she writes, ‘bows to the lightening of her eyes, the pick of her beak the swale of her appetite'. And at a place, she said that the sea is not a place but a fact and a mystery! She beautifully portrays the pink moccasins flower, rising in mid-May in the forest. I found her imagery of nature very poignant and sharp. Her love and close liaison with nature were very much visible in this book, I glided over this prepossessing and panoramic depiction of nature through her verses. I loved the book and I will finish my thought on the book with these lines,

“For years and years, I struggled
just to love my life and then
the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
“don’t love your life too much”
it’s said,
and vanished into the world.”

[richa ⋆.˚★ · Rating 5 out of 5]

*screaming in cottage core*

[anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

thank u, mary, for my life

[Jeannie · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite Mary Oliver book so far!

I had a very hard time picking a favorite.
I loved Wild Geese, The Journey, The Sunflowers and felt so much sadness reading Rage.

I highly recommend this to my friends who love poetry!

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dream Work is Book Six in my October poetry challenge. No surprise, this was excellent, and also extremely relevant to present time: It's all about how there's no light without darkness, and no transformation without fear.

[cameron]

this collection probably wouldn’t make it to the top of my favorites of hers, but it does have one of my new all time favorite poems, ‘Members of the tribe’ . go read it! other favorites are ‘robert schumann’ and ‘whispers’ thanks again sara for gifting me this <333

[Ebony (EKG)]

Mary Oliver is my favorite because she is the master of writing accessible poetry that compounds itself. Every poem involves a bit of undoing- a revelation connecting the human experience to nature. I came across the poem, Wild Geese, outside of Dream Work and was so happy to visit its home in this stunning collection. My absolute favorites are: Wild Geese, Members of the Tribe, The Journey, Poem, Sunrise, and The Waves.

I love Dream Work so much I had to stop myself from dog-earring every page. I already have bits of Wild Geese and Poem memorized. Mary Oliver has my heart (always did but my love for her is undying, forever, etc).

[Jillian B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Calling Mary Oliver an amazing poet is kind of like saying “you know, that Picasso guy can really paint.” To anyone who’s read her, the statement feels painfully obvious. And yet I was blown away by the depth of the feelings this collection inspired in me. I’m not really a nature poetry girl, but Oliver deftly uses aspects of nature as metaphors even I could relate to. If you needed yet another person to recommend Oliver’s work before giving it a try, let this review be your sign!

[Olivia (Stories For Coffee) · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable read. Some poems really stuck out to me, but the majority weren’t impactful.

[alexia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Oliver’s writing is beautiful and impactful with the ability to evoke so many emotions. I personally loved The Geese, Sunrise, Acid, and The Sunflowers.

[maddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

stunning. i know i will read these poems many times over <3

[paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

favorite pieces:

wild geese / the fire / banyan / whispers / members of the tribe / the journey / one or two things

“One day you finally know
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.”

reading this collection at breakfast to start my days right made me think how lucky i truly am to exist in a world where mary oliver shares her words.

[Proustitute (on hiatus) · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on."

[Ygraine · Rating 4 out of 5]

“and if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead —
if it’s all you can do
to keep on trudging —

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted —

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.”

(from morning poem)

i think there is much to be said for difficulty, for ambiguity, for impenetrability; texts that resist the reading experience or experiment with the boundaries of form and style as they exist invite endless reading and re-reading, abundant attention. but i think there's something different but just as substantial to be said for simplicity, for transparency, for the very different kind of diligence that is required to create something that works so entirely alongside the reader, rather than against them, and for the very different kind of devotion in reading and re-reading that it invites.

i adore mary oliver, and her poetry like sea-glass, each piece new, shaped by wind and sea and the slow movement of the world. i adore the world as i see it through these fragments.

[— sab · Rating 5 out of 5]

"whoever you are, no matter now 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."

— favorites: ‘dogfish’, ‘morning poem’, ‘trilliums’, ‘wild geese’, ‘shadows’, ‘starfish’.