Upstream: Selected Essays
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The transition from engaging the natural world to engaging more personal realms was also evident in New and Selected Poems (1992), which won the National Book Award . The volume contains poems from eight of Oliver’s previous volumes as well as previously unpublished, newer work. Susan Salter Reynolds, in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, noticed that Oliver’s earliest poems were almost always oriented toward nature, but they seldom examined the self and were almost never personal. In contrast, Oliver appeared constantly in her later works. But as Reynolds noted “this self-consciousness is a rich and graceful addition.” Just as the contributor for Publishers Weekly called particular attention to the pervasive tone of amazement with regard to things seen in Oliver’s work, Reynolds found Oliver’s writings to have a “Blake-eyed revelatory quality.” Oliver summed up her desire for amazement in her poem “When Death Comes” from New and Selected Poems:“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life / I was a bride married to amazement. / I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.” Publishers Weekly, May 4, 1990, p. 62; August 10, 1992, p. 58; June 6, 1994, review of A Poetry Handbook, p. 62; October 31, 1994, review of White Pine, p. 54; August 7, 1995, review of Blue Pastures, p. 457; June 30, 1997, review of West Wind, p. 73; March 29, 1999, review of Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems, p. 100; August 28, 2000, review of The Leaf and the Cloud, p. 79; July 21, 2003, review of Owls and Other Fantasies, p. 188. many places and in so many ways. But also the universe is brisk and businesslike, and no doubt does not give its delicate landscapes or its thunderous displays of power, and perhaps perception, too, for our sakes or our improvement.
Someone, Oliver suggests, must observe the dreamlike blue-winged birds that the moonlight is so eager to present. Just a minute, Said a Voice...Whitman was the brother I did not have. I did have an uncle, whom I loved, but he killed himself one rainy fall day; Whitman remained, perhaps more avuncular for the loss of the other. He was the gypsy boy my sister and I went off with into the far fields beyond the town, with our pony, to gather strawberries. The boy from Romania moved away; Whitman shone on in the twilight of my room, which was growing busy with books, and notebooks, and muddy boots, and my grandfather’s old Underwood typewriter. Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 21, 1983, p. 9; February 22, 1987, p. 8; August 30, 1992, p. 6. The best use of literature bends not toward the narrow and the absolute but to the extravagant and the possible. Answers are no part of it; rather, it is the opinions, the rhapsodic persuasions, the engrafted logics, the clues that are to the mind of the reader the possible keys to his own self-quarrels, his own predicament. This is the crux of Emerson, who does not advance straight ahead but wanders to all sides of an issue; who delivers suggestions with a kindly gesture— who opens doors and tells us to look at things for ourselves. The one thing he is adamant about is that we should look— we must look— for that is the liquor of life, that brooding upon issues, that attention to thought even as we weed the garden or milk the cow." It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world.” — Mary Oliver, Invitation Oliver immerses us in an ever-widening circle, in which a shrub or flower opens onto the cosmos, revealing our meager, masterful place in it. Hold Upstreamin your hands, and you hold a miracle of ravishing imagery and startling revelation.”— Minneapolis Star Tribune
I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.” — Mary OliverSometimes, when I'm reading her work, I'm smiling or nodding and really feeling groovy. For instance, in this collection, she ponders poetry: In keeping with the American impulse toward self-improvement, the transformation Oliver seeks is both simpler and more explicit. Unlike Rilke, she offers a blueprint for how to go about it. Just pay attention, she says, to the natural world around you—the goldfinches, the swan, the wild geese. They will tell you what you need to know. With a few exceptions, Oliver’s poems don’t end in thunderbolts. Theirs is a gentler form of moral direction. She's so sure of herself, she tells readers in a rather nonchalant way about nursing from her cat. She seriously just dropped this:
There are reflections on the way life used to be in small towns when bears were more welcome, dogs could roam free, and dwellings were constructed like patchwork quilts.
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Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads. ” — Mary Oliver, Mysteries, Yes In creative work — creative work of all kinds— those who are the world’s working artists are not trying to help the world go around, but forward. Which is something altogether different from the ordinary. Such work does not refute the ordinary. It is, simply, something else. Its labor requires a different outlook — a different set of priorities.
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