Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

I mean, it's Mary Oliver. There is not much more to be said :)

Poesia pura, in lingua originale.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) Bestselling Poet, Winner of the National Book Award & The Pulitzer Prize “Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that." The main theme the late Oliver shares is her abiding love and deep regard for the natural world. It is the fabric she prefers to lay her words on and wrap them up in and where she always found not only peace, but understanding of the importance of taking time to truly smell, touch and honor the earth. Though she has penned hundreds of poems, here are a few that I found especially notable. She also wrote many nature-themed essays but gave very few interviews feeling that her work could speak for itself. She was a New York Times bestselling poet with a wise and generous wisdom and an intimate respect for the world not of our making. Here are a few examples of her work; Mornings At Blackwater For years, every morning, I drank From Blackwater Pond. It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt, The feet of ducks. And always it assuaged me from the dry bowl of the very far past. What I want to say is that the past is the past, and the present is what your life is, and you are capable of choosing what that will be, darling citizen. So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing, and put your lips to the world. And live your life. Praying It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak. Three Things To Remember As long as you’re dancing, you can break the rules. Sometimes breaking the rules is just extending the rules. Sometimes there are no rules. For many, poetry has to rhyme, for others it has to adhere to a particular structure or have a certain word count and the variety of forms have accumulated over time. For Mary Oliver it had to express her observations of the natural world and perhaps she said it best, “When you write a poem, you write it for anybody and everybody.” • Poetry tells a story • What’s your poem?

I am not a big reader of poetry - I can appreciate the beauty of verse and the play on words, but complex and abstract poems overwhelm me and my senses, and I don’t particularly enjoy the almost athletic mental agility demanded at times. Oliver’s poems chased away my fears and changed my perspective. I felt drawn to them because they are so honest and deceptively simple. They are like a balm for the parched soul, so calming and quiet, that reading them feels like a refreshing dip in cool waters. This volume offers an overview of Oliver’s illustrious career documenting the sanctity of the banal and the everyday, the unnoticed and the natural. The simple beauty of nature’s song is captured in Oliver’s clean, resonant verse. Some enduring themes run through her poems, celebrating the “wild and precious life”, the mystery of prayer, and how it goes beyond words, and yet is found in the reverential communion with and contemplation of creation. And it is with respect to the species just as it is to the individual. It may be the grasshopper ‘who is eating sugar out of [her] hand’ and ‘snaps her wings open and floats away’ (“The Summer Day”) or the deer who stumbled against her “so busy with her own happiness” and Oliver’s recognition of ‘the flower of her amazement and the stalled breath of her curiosity, and even the damp touch of her solicitude before she took flight’ (“Picking Blueberries, Austerlitz, New York, 1957”). Oliver celebrates beauty and its separateness from the performance of nature for Her own benefit. In the poems, she embraces impermanence and transience of each passing moment, and yet appreciates the eternal in that moment, where she fully partakes of life in the present. There is so much to appreciate and to contemplate in this collection that words would never suffice. I am convinced new and fresh wisdom would unveil itself with each revisit. It took me more than a whole year to spend time with this mammoth collection without rushing through it. Any attempt to would have been counter to the words that bid me to slow down and take my time. More than 5 solid gold stars.

Helt fantastisk!!!!