Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

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Death is something that comes ‘out of the dark’ or ‘out of the water.’ It is grotesque given it has ‘the head the size of a cat but muddy and without ears.’ Yet, right in the middle of seven stanzas we read:

While society has grown a little wiser to how the technologies can be exploited by foreign governments and boiler rooms spewing misinformation, the costs of allowing our attention to be commandeered remain drastically understated. It was not Mary Oliver’s intent to critique this new world—and it’s hard to imagine she even owned a flip phone—but her poetry captures its spiritual costs. Though easily her best known quote is ‘ Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?’ which makes for perfect closing lines to The Summer Day. While often quoted without the full poem used as an inspirational message, what I love best about this line is that—in context—Oliver has already answered what she would do and that is to walk in the woods. Actually, it is such an amazing poem here is the whole thing: New York Times Book Review, July 17, 1983, pp. 10, 22; November 25, 1990, p. 24; December 13, 1992, p. 12. 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

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whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh & exciting - over & over announcing your place in the family of things” Imagine... I have heard the name Tecumseh before but never knew who he was... now, because of a poem, I'm going to go learn some history. Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing. And gave it up. And took my old body and went out into the morning, and sang.” It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world.” — Mary Oliver, Invitation

I cannot give these poems any accolades for their craft or uniqueness. They reminded me of the old Swanson TV dinners in foil trays: uniformly prepared and only requiring heating. Nothing is demanded of the reader; it is there for easy consumption and no more. A poet like Kay Ryan, for example, requires a thinking interaction with her readers. Oliver does not. Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information. 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.The subject of these poems included the slippery green frog, stones on the beach, blueberries, a vulture’s wings, and the gorgeous bluebird. Reading the poems is like going on a nature ramble with her and seeing what we often take for granted with new eyes. Oliver won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for her work. Below, we select and introduce ten of Mary Oliver’s best poems, and offer some reasons why she continues to speak to us about nature and about ourselves. You can buy much of her best work in the magnificent volume of her selected poems, Devotions. 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 falling. And I do.” ― Mary Oliver, House of Light In the poem, Evidence, Oliver reflected that memory can either be 'a golden bowl, or a basement without light' So many modern nature poets have written well about fish, whether it’s Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘The Fish’ or Ted Hughes’ ‘Pike’, to name just two famous examples. Here, Oliver once again yokes together human feeling with her observations of nature, as the dogfish tear open ‘the soft basins of water’.

Knowledge has entertained me and it has shaped me and it has failed me. Something in me still starves.” ― Mary Oliver, Upstream Oliver tells us that no matter how lonely we get, the whole world is available to our imagination. What makes us human, aside from the ability to feel love and despair, is our imaginative capability, and this human quality can enable us to forge links with the rest of nature and find a place within the ‘family of things’. You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.” ― Mary Oliver, Upstream In 1953, the day after she graduated from high school, Oliver left home. On a whim, she decided to drive to Austerlitz, in upstate New York, to visit Steepletop, the estate of the late poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. She and Millay’s sister Norma became friends, and Oliver “more or less lived there for the next six or seven years,” helping organize Millay’s papers. She took classes at Ohio State University and at Vassar, though without earning a degree, and eventually moved to New York City. Some of this, the more structured areas of the collection, I liked very much. Others, the more free flowing, stream-of-consciousness selections, didn’t resonate with me at all. For poems so firmly rooted in the physical realm, they tended to feel very ephemeral, which is a writing choice I always have difficulty connecting with. However, there were certain lines that resonated so strongly. While I might not have fallen in love with her style, I can easily see why it speaks so deeply to others.Publishers Weekly, May 4, 1990, p. 62; August 10, 1992, p. 58; June 6, 1994, review of A Poetry Handbook, p. 62; October 31, 1994, review of White Pine, p. 54; August 7, 1995, review of Blue Pastures, p. 457; June 30, 1997, review of West Wind, p. 73; March 29, 1999, review of Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems, p. 100; August 28, 2000, review of The Leaf and the Cloud, p. 79; July 21, 2003, review of Owls and Other Fantasies, p. 188.