Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver - Hardcover

Oliver, Mary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399563245 ISBN 13: 9780399563249

Publisher: Penguin Press, 2017

Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A READ WITH JENNA PICK • From the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Mary Oliver, a definitive and enduring collection of her best work

“No matter where one starts reading, Devotions offers much to love. . . . Perhaps more important, the luminous writing provides respite from our crazy world and demonstrates how mindfulness can define and transform a life, moment by moment, poem by poem.”—The Washington Post

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver, from “The Summer Day”

Throughout her celebrated career, Mary Oliver touched countless readers with her brilliantly crafted verse, expounding on her love for the physical world and the powerful bonds between all living things. Arranged by Oliver herself shortly before her death in 2019, Devotions features Oliver’s work from her very first book of poetry, No Voyage and Other Poems, published in 1963 at the age of twenty-eight, through her last, Felicity, published in 2015.

This timeless volume showcases the beloved poet at her edifying best. Within these pages, she provides us with an extraordinary and invaluable collection of her passionate, perceptive, and much-treasured observations of the natural world.

About this title

About the Author

Born in a small town in Ohio, Mary Oliver published her first book of poetry in 1963 at the age of 28. Over the course of her long career, she received numerous awards. Her fourth book, American Primitive, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984. She led workshops and held residencies at various colleges and universities, including Bennington College, where she held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching. She died in 2019.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

AT BLACKWATER POND

At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled
after a night of rain.
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Press
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0399563245
• ISBN 13: 9780399563249
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480