Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

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I felt a balm in my soul sharing Oliver’s nature study of the bees nuzzling against the roses, the white herons rising over blackwater, a honey locust tree in bloom, the thrush that heralds an early spring, the tern that wings its way on a summer’s day, or a tree that offers a ‘warm cave’ to the birds in autumn. In Tides, Oliver’s keen eye surveyed the sea (‘blue gray green lavender’), old whalebones, white fish spines, barnacle-clad stones, and the ‘piled curvatures’ of seaweeds.

What also helps make Oliver so popular is her accessibility, something she achieves through a directness without sacrificing depth or lacking in breathtaking poetic phrasing. By ignoring the ‘bad advice’ the strident voices around us provide, and trusting our instinct, because, deep down, we already know what we have to do. Cheryl Strayed used the final couplet of “The Summer Day,” probably Oliver’s most famous poem, as an epigraph to her popular memoir, “ Wild”: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?It is very nice to have selected poems from books not available as ebooks and those that are out of print: What Do We Know, The Leaf And The Cloud, White Pine, American Primitive, Twelve Moons, The River Styx, Ohio, and No Voyage. Oliver’s poetry won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and a Lannan Literary Award for lifetime achievement . Carefully curated, these 200 plus poems feature Oliver's work from her very first book of poetry, No Voyage and Other Poems, published in 1963 at the age of 28, through her most recent collection, Felicity, published in 2015. She took classes at Ohio State University and at Vassar, though without earning a degree, and eventually moved to New York City. I selected it because so many people love her and are nourished by her work, and unlike in any other poem in Devotions here she seems to be addressing her critics.

June 1, 1998, Donna Seaman, review of Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse, p. Oliver is notoriously reticent about her private life, but it was during this period that she met her long-time partner, Molly Malone Cook. Walking the woods, with Whitman in her knapsack, was her escape from an unhappy home life: a sexually abusive father, a neglectful mother. In a Times essay disparaging an issue of the magazine O devoted to poetry, in which Oliver was interviewed by Maria Shriver, the critic David Orr wrote of her poetry that “one can only say that no animals appear to have been harmed in the making of it.Although these poems are lovely, offering a singular and often startling way of looking at God, the predominance of the spiritual and the natural in the collection ultimately flattens Oliver’s range. Though her poems are not always nature oriented, and Oliver’s directness can be sharpened to cut as well. I couldn't help but visualise this as a final testament to living, a recap that runs backwards towards birth, something like a video montage of a flower picking itself back up from the ground and going from bloom to bud. you can find anything in here: on love, on nature, on time, on life, on sadness, on grief - anything and everything.

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. Over time, as she carefully observes and records, Oliver extols the beauty and complexity around her and reminds us of the interconnectedness of living.Over time, as she carefully observes and records, Oliver extols the beauty and complexity around her and reminds us of the interconnectedness of living . After reading a few poems, I realized she is still relatable no matter when she wrote them and when you are reading them. Classic poems that are “old school” and have a “everything is sweet and lovely, and God is good” feeling.

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. Chicago TribunePulitzer 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. 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.Perhaps for this reason much of her poetry uses the natural world as the lens through which she peers into the human heart and mind. poems are often an exercise in ecstasy, charting those moments when the temporal is touched by the transcendental. Oliver, as a Times profile a few years ago put it, likes to present herself as “the kind of old-fashioned poet who walks the woods most days, accompanied by dog and notepad. In keeping with the title of the collection—one meaning of “devotion” is a private act of worship The subject of these poems included the slippery green frog, stones on the beach, blueberries, a vulture’s wings, and the gorgeous bluebird.