Mary Oliver – författare

A New York Times Bestseller, chosen as Oprah's 'Books That Help Me Through' for Oprah's Book ClubChosen by Poetry Book Society as their special commendation'No matter where one starts reading, Devotions offers much to love, from Oliver's exuberant dog poems to selections from the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Primitive, and Dream Work, one of her exceptional collections. 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'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 TribuneThroughout 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. Devotions is a stunning, definitive and carefully curated collection featuring work from over fifty years of writing - from Oliver's very first book of poetry, No Voyage and Other Poems, published in 1963 at the age of 28, through to her last collection, Felicity, published in 2015. This timeless volume, arranged by Oliver herself, 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.

I go down to the shore in the morningand depending on the hour the wavesare rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable,what shall-what should I do? And the sea saysin its lovely voice:Excuse me, I have work to do.Whether studying the leaves of a tree or mourning her treasured dog Percy, Mary Oliver is beautifully open to the teachings contained within the smallest of moments. In A Thousand Mornings she explores, with startling clarity, humour and kindness, the mysteries of our daily experience.

'The popularity of [Dog Songs] feels as inevitable and welcome as a wagging tail upon homecoming' Boston GlobeIn Dog Songs, Mary Oliver celebrates the special bond between human and dog, as understood through her connection to the dogs who across the years accompanied her on her daily walks, warmed her home and inspired her work. The poems in Dog Songs begin in the small everyday moments familiar to all dog lovers and become, through her extraordinary vision, meditations on the world and our place in it.Dog Songs includes visits with old friends, like Oliver's most beloved dog Percy, and introduces still others in poems of love and laughter, heartbreak and grief. Throughout, the many dogs of Oliver's life merge as fellow travelers and as guides, uniquely able to open our eyes to the lessons of the moment and the joys of nature and connection.

“Mary Oliver would probably never admit to anything so grandiose as an effort to connect the conscious mind and the heart (that’s what she says poetry can do), but that is exactly what she accomplishes in this stunning little handbook.”— Los Angeles TimesFrom the beloved and acclaimed poet, an ultimate guide to writing and understanding poetry.With passion and wit, Mary Oliver skillfully imparts expertise on the poet’s craft from her long, celebrated career. She walks readers through exactly how a poem is built, from meter and rhyme, to form and diction, to sound and sense, drawing on poems by Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and others. This essential poetry handbook is an invaluable glimpse into Oliver’s prolific mind—a must-have for all poetry-lovers and students of creative writing.

Dream Work, a collection of forty-five poems originally published in 1986, follows both chronologically and logically Mary Oliver's American Primitive, which won her the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1983. The depth and diversity of perceptual awareness, so steadfast and radiant in American Primitive, continues in Dream Work. Additionally, she has turned her attention in these poems to the solitary and difficult labours of the spirit, to accepting the truth about one's personal world, and to valuing the triumphs while transcending the failures of human relationships.

'And just like that, like a simpleneighbourhood event, a miracle istaking place.''If I have any secret stash of poems, anywhere, it might be about love, not anger,' Mary Oliver once said in an interview. Finally, in Felicity, we can immerse ourselves in Oliver's love poems. Here, great happiness abounds. Our most delicate chronicler of physical landscape, Oliver has described her work as loving the world. With Felicity she examines what it means to love another person. She opens our eyes again to the territory within our own hearts; to the wild and to the quiet. In these poems, she describes - with joy - the strangeness and wonder of human connection.

‘Tell me, what is it you plan to dowith your one wild and precious life?’One of America’s best loved poets, Mary Oliver is also among nature’s most brilliant and devoted observers, whose words ask us to live with our eyes open wider. This luminous selection brings together her best-known works from across her career.‘Oliver’s poems are … as genuine, moving, and implausible as the first caressing breeze of spring’ New York Times Book Review‘Mary Oliver’s poetry is fine and deep; it reads like a blessing’ Stanley Kunitz‘Just a few seemingly simple phrases perfectly express what we need to know just then, in that moment’ Oprah Winfrey‘It doesn’t feel like you have to take a seminar in order to understand Mary Oliver’s poetry. She’s speaking directly to you as a human being’ Ruth Franklin, The New Yorker

From the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winning poet Mary Oliver, a collection of evocative and haunting poetry and prose“Oliver’s poems are...as genuine, moving and implausible as the first caressing breeze of spring.” —New York TimesIn her first collection since winning the National Book Award, Mary Oliver writes of the silky bonds between every person and the natural world, of the delight of writing, of the value of silence. The collection features the fourteen-part poem “In the Blackwater Woods,” as well as “At the Lake” and the prose poem “Snail.”

With piercing clarity and craftsmanship, Mary Oliver has fashioned an unforgettable poem of questioning and discovery, about what is observable and what is not, about what passes and what persists. As the U.S. Poet Laureate, Stanley Kunitz, has said: "Mary Oliver's poetry is fine and deep it reads like a blessing. Her special gift is to connect us with our sources in the natural world, its beauties and terrors and mysteries and consolations." The Boston Globe has called Mary Oliver "a great poet . . . she is amazed but not blinded." And the Miami Herald has said: "The gift of Oliver's poetry is that she communicates the beauty she finds in the world and makes it unforgettable."

Mary Oliver's poetry is fine and deep it reads like a blessing," wrote Stanley Kunitz many years ago and recently, Rita Dove described her last volume, The Leaf and the Cloud, as "a brilliant meditation." For the many admirers of Mary Oliver's dazzling poetry and luminous vision, as well as for those who may be coming to her work for the first time, What Do We Know will be a revelation. These forty poems-of observing, of searching, of pausing, of astonishment, of giving thanks-embrace in every sense the natural world, its unrepeatable moments and its ceaseless cycles. Mary Oliver evokes unforgettable images-from one hundred white-sided dolphins on a summer day to bees that have memorized every stalk and leaf in a field-even as she reminds us, after Emerson, that "the invisible and imponderable is the sole fact.

Poets must read and study, but also they must learn to tilt and whisper, shout, or dance, each in his or her own way, or we might just as well copy the old books. But, no, that would never do, for always the new self swimming around in the old world feels itself uniquely verbal. And that is just the point: how the world, moist and bountiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning.'Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?' This book is my comment.- from the Foreword.

A curated compendium of poetry and prose from the award-winning poet Mary Oliver, including the book-length masterpiece The Leaf and the Cloud, the collection What Do We Know, andessays from Long Life-with a foreword by fellow Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Postcolonial Love Poem Natalie Diaz.For the many admirers of Mary Oliver's breathtaking poetry of touch and transcendence, as well as for those coming to her words for the first time, Little Alleluias is a revelation.These works observe, search, pause, astonish, and give thanks to both love and the natural world. In constant conversation with the sublime, (i.e. "Are you afraid? / Somewhere a thousand swans are flying / through winter's worst storm."), Oliver has the rare skill of rendering existence: her poems bring movement to stillness, and people to the Earth, themselves, and each other. Her essays declare her heart and her home, too, alongside thoughts on Wordsworth, Emerson, and Hawthorne-the odes and elegies of Provincetown's resident poet.On each page, Mary Oliver invites us to walk through her minutes, her moments, and revere the light and dark and rainbowed clothes of world alongside her. With three distinct books collected in one volume for the first time, Little Alleluias asks what passes and what persists, and offers readers the peace that every life deserves."Hers is a purposeful language, one that looks not just with attention but with sensual intention, and though awestruck, seeks to hold, even briefly, the unknowns of the energies that make any life. Little alleluias, she called her writings. Not meant to define but to praise, to rejoice in the maker and what has been made, to dare be heard as a whisper or a shout in this immense world."-Natalie Diaz, in her Foreword

The New York Times has called Mary Oliver's poems "thoroughly convincing - as genuine, moving, and implausible as the first caressing breeze of spring." In this stunning collection of forty poems - nineteen previously unpublished - she writes of nature and love, of the way they transform over time. And the way they remain constant. And what did you think love would be like A summer day The brambles in their places, and the long stretches of mud Flowers in every field, in every garden, with their soft beaks and their pastel shoulders On one street after another, the litter ticks in the gutter. In one room after another, the lovers meet, quarrel, sicken, break apart, cry out. One or two leap from windows. Most simply lean, exhausted, their thin arms on the sill. They have done all they could. The golden eagle, that lives not far from here, has perhaps a thousand tiny feathers flowing from the back of its head, each one shaped like an infinitely small but perfect spear.