One of the striking things evident in the arrangement of the poems is that her later poems are much shorter, and to me carry more meaning in fewer words. In the concluding lines of “Why I Wake Early” (2004) she writes, “Watch, now, how I start the day/in happiness, in kindness.” The reference “into thanks” reflects another theme running through her work, a profound thankfulness for life, even in its transience. Her poem “Praying” (from Thirst, 2006) might do as well as anything to encapsulate the prayers of the “spiritual but not religious”: It doesn't have to be The transcendent is never far, sometimes in the Romantic awareness of the Ultimate in all things, sometimes in echoes of Christianity, writing of “Gethsemane” and Psalm 145. Her poetry is suffused with wonder at the simplest things, her sense of the oneness of all things and her desire to be one with them. She writes of snakes and swans, of the pond near her home, of blueberries and violets, sunrises and sparrows. One of the most striking things one notices is that most of the poems are of sights on her daily walks near her home in Provincetown in New England. The book features over 200 of her poems arranged in reverse chronological order, most recent first. This collection is a good introduction to her work, a selection of her poetry written between 19 and published in 2017, a couple years before her passing.
I am glad at last to have found her, a writer roughly of my generation. How did I miss knowing of her for so long? She was even teaching at nearby Case Western Reserve during some of the time I lived there and it was during this time that she won the Pulitzer prize in 1984 for her collection American Primitive. Isn’t that how it often has been with great writers? One of the ironies of this was that I lived in Oliver’s birthplace of Maple Heights, Ohio for nine years. I have only discovered the poetry of Mary Oliver since her death in 2019. Summary: A selection of the poetry of Mary Oliver written between 1963 to 2015. Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Olive r, Mary Oliver.
0 kommentar(er)
