Upstream: Selected Essays

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Bennet commended Oliver’s “distinctive voice and vision” and asserted that the “collection contains a number of powerful, substantial works.

Throughout this collection, Oliver positions not just herself upstream but us as well as she encourages us all to keep moving, to lose ourselves in the awe of the unknown, and to give power and time to the creative and whimsical urges that live within us. Still, all in all, it is a good collection, even if I was disappointed Oliver's own poetry was not really present. The best use of literature bends not toward the narrow and the absolute but to the extravagant and the possible. June 1, 1998, Donna Seaman, review of Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse, p. I’ve tried several of Mary Oliver’s poetry books and did not care for them at all, but was hoping for a different outcome with this essay collection.

Upstream is a tremendously vitalizing read in its totality, grounding and elevating at the same time. The richness of these essays—part revelation, part instruction—will prompt readers to dive in again and again. Upstream was published by Penguin Press in 2016 and I was able to read it thanks to my local library system. In How Not to Kill Yourself, Martin chronicles his multiple suicide attempts in an intimate depiction of the mindset of someone obsessed with self-destruction. For LGBTQIA+ Pride Month in June, we are celebrating the community with a collection that displays its contributions to society.

I fell in love with Mary in the depths of loneliness after my divorce and a corporate soap opera ending. Now, when I look up at the sky, at a seagull, or at a Walt Whitman poem, I'll think of her and thank her!

Thanks to an old yet never sated etymology addiction and a penchant for eagerly grabbing the bait whenever an article like "50 Untranslatable Words From Other Languages" pops up in my radar, waldeinsamkeit is what comes to mind when I think of having an intense connection with nature.

The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves - we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together.The volume contains poems from eight of Oliver’s previous volumes as well as previously unpublished, newer work. Overfishing and climate change have transformed it into “a town of pleasure,” yet one that has for her always been “heaven.