New and Selected Poems, Volume One
by Mary Oliver
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Book Summary Information
Author: Mary OliverEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-04-15
ISBN: 0807068772
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Beacon Press
Book Reviews of New and Selected Poems, Volume One
Book Review: She Is A Sublime Witness To The Natural World!
Summary: 5 Stars
Mary Oliver overwhelms my visual and auditory senses with her language; it is precise and controlled; her imagery is brilliant. Using carefully chosen words she captures the "essence" of living things in the natural world.
Each work is masterful and seems a deep meditation that leaves a reader feeling refreshed and somehow privy to a personal, even private part of the poet as an investigator and witness to nature and its secrets.
Each time I read one of her poems I feel as if she is inviting me into the woods with her to witness the natural world in all of its sacredness.
I have yet to read a poem of hers that disappointed me.
Her mood-infused poem "Rain" (the first poem in the book) is sublime; and "Mushrooms" is glorious!
Read "Mushrooms" slowly and listen to the language; see the imagery in the mind:
Rain, and then
the cool pursed
lips of the wind
draw them
out of the ground---
red and yellow skulls
pummeling upward
through leaves,
through grasses,
through sand; astonishing
in their suddenness,
their quietude,
their wetness, they appear
on fall mornings, some
balancing in the earth
on one hoof
packed with poison,
others billowing
chunkily, and delicious---
those who know
walk out to gather, choosing
the benign from flocks
of glitterers, sorcerors,
russulas,
panther caps,
shark-white death angels
in their torn veils
looking innocent as sugar
but full of paralysis:
to eat
is to stagger down
fast as mushrooms themselves
when they are done being perfect
and overnight
slide back under the shining
fields of rain.
My God! I don't think that even a mushroom would know itself in that way.
She is a sublime witness to the natural world.
Mary Oliver is one of my favorite poets -- and let me tell you, I don't have many "favorite poets".
I recommend this poetry collection to you!
Summary of New and Selected Poems, Volume One
When New and Selected Poems, Volume One was originally published in 1992, Mary Oliver was awarded the National Book Award. In the fourteen years since its initial appearance it has become one of the best-selling volumes of poetry in the country. This collection features thirty poems published only in this volume as well as selections from the poet's first eight books.Mary Oliver's perceptive, brilliantly crafted poems about the natural landscape and the fundamental questions of life and death have won high praise from critics and readers alike. "Do you love this world?" she interrupts a poem about peonies to ask the reader. "Do you cherish your humble and silky life?" She makes us see the extraordinary in our everyday lives, how something as common as light can be "an invitation/to happiness,/and that happiness,/when it's done right,/is a kind of holiness,/palpable and redemptive." She illuminates how a near miss with an alligator can be the catalyst for seeing the world "as if for the second time/the way it really is." Oliver's passionate demonstrations of delight are powerful reminders of the bond between every individual, all living things, and the natural world.
As Diane Wakoski has noted, the power of Mary Oliver's Frost-influenced pastoral writing is in her ability to cast a spell, to create "the illusion that the natural world is graspable." Oliver's fierce independence, beautiful imagery, and love and knowledge of the natural world are all driven by a searching mind, expressed in poems that make for good company. In Some Questions You Might Ask, Oliver gives us this one to chew over: "Is the soul solid, like iron?/ or is it tender and breakable, like/ the wings of a moth in the beak of an owl?" Highly recommended.
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