Devotions

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I’d like to believe she achieved this and if her poetry is any testament to a life lived, then it was a life well lived. If you haven’t read Mary Oliver before, definitely do so as soon as possible. Even those who don’t usually read poetry tend to love her. Mary Oliver achieved great popularity but also great depth of heart and will live on as one of the greats of our time.

Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver - AbeBooks Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver - AbeBooks

It is easy to see why one might perchance envy a dog’s life – ‘breaking the new snow with wild feet’ and ‘not thinking, not weighing anything, just running forward.’ This review update is based on a selection of poems ‘From Blue Horses (2014)'. The eleven poems in this collection expressed the repose and comfort Oliver found in the natural world and quietly invited the reader to share her gratitude. She truly was a poet after the nature lover’s own heart. Featured in Red Birds (2008) are poems that show her love of animals that share our world. In Night Herons, Oliver observed the herons fishing at night. Only a poet with her sensitivity would have contemplated what it meant for the fish who were ‘full of fish happiness’ one moment and then became the herons’ supper the next. In Invitation, Oliver invited us to linger just to listen to the ‘musical battle’ of the goldfinches because their ‘melodious striving’ revealed the ‘sheer delight and gratitude...of being alive.’ The saddest poem is Red about two gray foxes that were run over by cars and how she carried them to the fields and watched them bleed to death ('Gray fox and gray fox. Red, red, red.') I'm also going to look for a location called Truro. Apparently it was wild enough, a few decades ago, that people who said they saw a bear were almost believed. Now, it must be in the East somewhere, because in the West bears are relatively common 'pests.' 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.

note again that GR won't hold spacing, and most poetry is shaped by indented lines, so bear in mind that my samples are not quite accurate) 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. Beginning with her first book in 1963, Mary Oliver’s poetry has been a touchstone for understanding our world and ourselves. She described her work as loving the world. Her poems capture the human spirit and nature’s complexity with wonder and awe. Starting with an openness to the teachings contained in the smallest of moments, Mary Oliver is a determined explorer of the mysteries of our daily experience.

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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 This review is on selected poems from two collections published in 2008: The Truro Bear and Other Adventures and Red Birds. The poems contained her thoughts on two subjects: nature (the heron, the fish, the gray fox, the meadowlark, the panther, the pond, etc.) and self (ambition and dying). It amazes me how the most ordinary things can summon up contemplation that gives us pause.I will mention them now, / I will not mention them again,” Oliver writes of her parents, after speaking in sympathetic but oblique terms about her relationship with them (70-71). The poem seems to take place at the time of Oliver’s burying her parents, and as she says in this poem, they do not appear in her work in any of the later poems which are collected earlier in the book. This poem proves to be a turning point, however, and the poems that follow it, from earlier in Oliver’s career, reveal more personal details about her life. In this collection of her selected poems, these are her favorites, not necessarily my favorites. I have loved her smaller, more intimate collections that all seemed to harmonize together. For that reason, on a personal level this collection is really a 4 star for me but I am giving her 5 stars because poetry is always subjective and there are many, many outstanding poems here. of her work fixated on subjects including identity, mortality, and nature, often blending these vital fascinations within the same poem: 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. Reading a couple of Oliver’s poems each morning is like having a devotion, a communion of sorts with the beauty that resides in the goodness around us. This review will be built up bit by bit at the breakfast table.

Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver [PDF] [EPUB] Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

These poems were inspired by what is often unobserved - Queen Anne’s Lace in an 'unworked field' making ‘all the loveliness it can’ or a swan ‘rising into the silvery air, an armful of white blossoms, a perfect commotion of silk and linen.’ They also steer our thoughts toward beneficent ways of approaching the hosts of things that worry us or claim our lives. Most of all, I love reading about how she went about walking in the woods. It has been a month since I last read from this devotional of poems. It is good to hear Mary Oliver’s voice again. It is always refreshing to see the world through her eyes. Featured, too, in Red Birds (2008) are Oliver’s thoughts about mortality, this life, amassing things, and chasing our ambitions. The following poems are the ones that stood out for me. Here are excerpts from two poems I love. The first is prose-like and too lovely not to reproduce in full. Ordinarily I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable.There is a constancy or fidelity in nature elegantly communicated in my favorite poem in this collection: Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver presents a personal selection of her best work in this definitive collection spanning more than five decades of her esteemed literary career.