Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

by Mary Oliver

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.

Throughout her celebrated career, Mary Oliver has touched countless readers with her brilliantly crafted verse, expounding on her love for the physical world and the powerful bonds between all living things. Identified as "far and away, this country's best selling poet" by Dwight Garner, she now returns with a stunning and definitive collection of her writing from the last fifty years.

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. 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

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Nature, Classics, Queer, Spirituality, Adult

480 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 10, 2017

About the author

Mary Jane Oliver was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her work is inspired by nature, rather than the human world, stemming from her lifelong passion for solitary walks in the wild.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Libby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am aware of the criticisms of Mary Oliver’s work. She wrote about perhaps uncool things like God and the natural world and has been called “earnest” amongst other patronizing things. I believe that the critics are missing the core of her work which comes from an embodied sense of the ecstatic connection to all things. That we are not indeed truly separate but appear so in manifest form. This is not a cerebral concept, it is a felt sense in the body and Oliver’s poetry is drenched in this but without fanfare, without fluff and spin. The words are unsophisticated but they are imbued with her lived sense. If you do not know this feeling in your body you will not be able to identify it purely from the mind. To read her work without this embodied sense is to miss the beauty of the energetic transmission within the words. When I read her words I feel the poetry in my being in a way that is well beyond mental imagery and cerebral dissection. Yes the words are simple but the embodiment of them is where there is lush responsive, resonance. I like Devotions particularly because she chose the poems. “Attention is the beginning of devotion” is a line in one of the poems and this rings true to me. Attention is how we cultivate an intimacy with the whole of life...a felt sense of of the moment...this feeling what is in each moment leads deeper and deeper into an embodied connection and for me a reverential awe at the interconnectedness of all life which inspires in me a devotional love beyond words. Mary Oliver attempts to put this devotional love in words and this is why I love her work.

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world
and the responsibilities of your life.’

An absolute icon of modern poetry.
Once called the ‘indefatigable guide to the natural world,’ by Maxine Kumin, winner of both the Pulitzer and National Book Award, one of the bestselling and best-loved US poets of all-time, Mary Oliver is an undeniable gem of poetry. With a style that is as accessible as it is ponderous and moving, Oliver’s poetry elegantly examines life from the thin barrier between human and wild animal, our companionship with the world, to the confrontation and acceptance of darkness. Her words capture our finite existence in all its wonders and beauty where even ‘a box full of darkness’ can be understood ‘that this, too, was a gift.’ I’ve been reading Oliver for years and every time I think I’ve exhausted her collections for poems that nearly knock me to the floor I discover another and its like the sky opening up and all of the cosmos raining down into my heart. She’s absolutely perfect. Those looking for an in-depth and expansive look at her works should certainly turn to Devotions, a selected poems spanning her entire career from her first collection, No Voyage and Other Poems, published in 1963 when Oliver was only 28, to her final book in 2015, Felicity. Though Oliver passed in 2019 at the age of 83, her poetry will live on and I suspect that as long as poems are being read, she will be a name remembered for generations to come.

Don’t Hesitate

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case.
Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

There is magic enough in this world if we just remember to look. ‘Imagination is better than a sharp instrument,’ Mary Oliver says, reminding us, ‘to pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.’ Often we just need to step outside of ourselves a moment to see the world anew. Oliver reminds us what it is to be human in the most tender of ways and grants an empowering universiality to her work that makes us feel in communion with the world and one another in a manner that makes you glad to be alive, breathing this air, able to read her words. Take this poem for instance, from A Thousand Mornings: Poems:

Poem of the One World

This morning
the beautiful white heron
was floating along above the water

and then into the sky of this
the one world
we all belong to

where everything
sooner or later
is a part of everything else

which thought made me feel
for a little while
quite beautiful myself.

Like the final lines state, to read a beautiful Mary Oliver is to feel beautiful oneself. To take those words inside you and let them purify your weary heart, dry your tears, remind you that even when you are miserable and wondering what to do, there is still work to be done and you can rise to the challenge.

And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.

Growing up in Ohio, Oliver said in one of her rare interviews that she ‘felt those first important connections, those first experiences being made with the natural world rather than with the social world.’ 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. At 17, Oliver would befriend Norma, the sister to poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, and spend most of a decade organizing St. Vincent Millay’s papers while working for her estate. She attended Ohio State University and Vassar College without finishing a degree, but once her first collection of poetry came out her career as a poet was well under way and she would later teach while working as a poet-in residence at several colleges before finishing her career as Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College. Her collections are also highly decorated, winning the Pulitzer Prize for American Primitive as well as the National Book Award for New and Selected Poems While at the St. Vincent Millay estate she would meet Molly Malone Cook, who would become her life-long partner as well as agent until Molly passed in 2005. Molly had previously owned a bookstore where she employed a young John Waters before he became a celebrated filmmaker and the couple maintained a friendship with him for the remainder of their lives. Though my favorite anecdote is that, while working as Mary’s agent, whenever a call came in for her, Molly would just pretend to be her on the phone and eventually editors just came to accept her as the same as actually speaking to Mary.

Molly and Mary

I Did Think, Let’s Go About This Slowly:

I did think, lets go about this slowly.
This is important, this should take
some really deep thought. We should take
small thoughtful steps.

But, bless us, we didn’t.

‘I got saved by poetry, and I got saved by the beauty of the world,’ Oliver said in an interview for On Being, and the act of looking into the world to find inspiration for poetry was what led her to the world that saved her. And it can save us too if we remember to look and be mindful (of this Oliver writes that she would like ‘people to remember of me how inexhaustible was her mindfulness’). And poetry can help awaken that. ‘As for the poem,’ she writes, ‘not this poem but any / poem, do you feel its sting? Do you feel / its hope, its entrance to a community? Do / you feel its hand in your hand?’ If our hearts are open, poetry can move us, and poetry helps us communicate. With the author, with each other, with the world. Poetry, Oliver says in the interview, is ‘ very sacred. It wishes for a community — it’s a community ritual, certainly,’ And, as she think of Marc’s painting, it can help make the world kinder if we remember to make something beautiful in order to share it.

‘And that’s why, when you write a poem, you write it for anybody and everybody. And you have to be ready to do that out of your single self. It’s a giving. It’s always — it’s a gift. It’s a gift to yourself, but it’s a gift to anybody who has a hunger for it.’

Oliver has always made poetry seem like a sacred act, like a prayer, and here, writing near the end of her life, we can see her reflect on how much poetry has been as much a blessing to her as it is to us, her readers.

to live in this world

you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go
   —From, In Blackwater Woods

Part of what has retained Mary Oliver’s popularity is she is so endlessly quotable and her numerous, beloved one-liners come from poems so good its almost a shame to highlight them without the full thing. Social media is full of her little nuggets of brilliance, such as (read full poems in links) ‘Listen – are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?’ (from Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches? ), ‘You only have to let / the soft animal of your body / love what it loves,’ (from Wild Geese ), ‘it is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world,’ (from Invitation ) or slightly longer quotes such as:
‘Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.’
(from Sometimes )

Though easily her best known quote is ‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?’ which makes for perfect closing lines to The Summer Day . While often quoted without the full poem used as an inspirational message, what I love best about this line is that—in context—Oliver has already answered what she would do and that is to walk in the woods. Actually, it is such an amazing poem here is the whole thing:

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

That all is such a perfect expression of what Oliver’s poetry is like. ‘Welcome to the silly, comforting poem,’ Oliver begins her poem Flare which, oddly enough, is also perfect because her poems are SO comforting and uplifting. Even when she is talking about death, which she can manage in a way only Jane Hirshfield can do. Oliver’s prose borders on religious experience without ever being actually religious, or as Alicia Ostriker once wrote, Oliver is ‘among the few American poets who can describe and transmit ecstasy, while retaining a practical awareness of the world as one of predators and prey,’ as well as referring to her as equal to Ralph Waldo Emerson.

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.

The poems are most often calm and thoughtful, echoing a serenity of nature and gazing in wonderment at the marvelous possibilities of existence. Even in poems such as The Kitten, which deals with burning a stillborn kitten, she writes ‘life is infinitely inventive, / saying, what other amazements / lie in the dark seed of the earth…’ When we read Oliver, we see life as alive with beauty and are better for it.

I want
to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.
   —From Starlings in Winter

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. She is a perfect poet to pass to someone looking for an entryway into the world of poetry, and her focus on life as seen through nature is always easy to identify with. Though her poems are not always nature oriented, and Oliver’s directness can be sharpened to cut as well. Such as this one:

Of The Empire

We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

‘Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable,’ Oliver wrote, and her poetry is a perfect tool for ensuring that space is kept open. To read Oliver is to approach what must be what some call ‘the Divine,’ and I’ve never once regretted picking up a volume of hers to read. Even her collection all about dogs is nothing but sheer bliss pouring into your heart. It was tragic to lose her in 2019, right around the same time another giant of modern US poetry who also excelled at poetry harnessing the natural word, W.S. Merwin, passed but her words certainly outlive her and most likely even you and I. In her poem When Death Comes , Oliver writes:

‘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.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world’

I’d like to believe she achieved this and if her poetry is any testament to a life lived, then it was a life well lived. If you haven’t read Mary Oliver before, definitely do so as soon as possible. Even those who don’t usually read poetry tend to love her. Mary Oliver achieved great popularity but also great depth of heart and will live on as one of the greats of our time.

5/5

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life that you could save.

Crazy Little Love Song

I don’t want eventual,
I want soon.
It’s 5 a.m. It’s noon.
It’s dusk falling to dark.
I listen to music.
I eat up a few wild poems
while time creeps along
as though it’s got all day.
This is what I have.
The dull hangover of waiting,
the blush of my heart on the damp grass,
the flower-faced moon.
A gull broods on the shore
where a moment ago there were two.
Softly my right hand fondles my left hand
as though it were you.

[ally · Rating 5 out of 5]

🌈✨🐍🦔first favorite of 2023🦢🌱🐌🎈

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

It gives me no pleasure to write honest negative reviews. Mary Oliver is a beloved American poet and her work does nothing for me.

⭐⭐

HOW I GO TO THE WOODS

"Ordinarily I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable. I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours. Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing. If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.

⭐⭐

In her work there's no meter, no rhyme, no alliteration, no subtext. She's not the only poet who writes this way but she's the most celebrated. I need my poetry to have one or as many as possible of those qualities. If I'm reading a solid block of text I want it to scan, have sibilance; otherwise it's prose and in this case, not particularly good prose. I need to feel when I read a poem that time and care has gone into the selection of each word, that it's been placed there as carefully as a jeweler with a loupe carefully uses their special tools to place precious gems in their setting.

I think I understand why people love them so: they're mostly about nature, they're happy, they make one feel good. But there's not one in this collection that resonated with me and Mary Oliver curated this herself, oddly going backwards from her latter work to the beginning. I read it both ways and I'd read some of it before in magazines. And then I read literary reviews. Some were negative, some not and I found a few reviews of different books in the same publication -- including the New Yorker, New York Times and the Washington Post -- in which one critic wrote this is not poetry, this is nothing special at all and another, before or after, says it's magic and she is/was a treasure.

There's nothing to interpret in her lines. I'm walking in the woods and I hear an owl. I see a bird's nest. Here are these trees, there this animal, that plant and "If God exists he isn't just butter and good luck. He's also the tick that killed my wonderful dog Luke..." But for a lot of people who won't agree with me, there's something to cherish.

Mary Oliver had nothing to prove; she led a happy life in beautiful places with her lifelong partner, and was celebrated, decorated and adored. Like the rest of her work this doesn't engage my mind or heart let alone make my soul sing or even hum. 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.

A LESSON FROM JAMES WRIGHT

If James Wright
could put in his book of poems
a blank page

dedicated to "the Horse David
Who Ate One of My Poems," I am ready
to follow him along

the sweet path he cut
through the dryness
and suggest that you sit now

very quietly
in some lovely wild place, and listen
to the silence.

And I say that this, too,
is a poem.

⭐⭐

[Jeannie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful collection of poetry from Mary Oliver. I finished it with a tear in my eye knowing there won't be anything more from her. She just passed away this year. There is something about her poetry that is comforting to me. I'm sorry she is gone.

It was very hard to pick a favorite poem from this book because there are so many I loved.
This one is still one of my favorites.

What Gorgeous Thing

I do not know what gorgeous thing
the bluebird keeps saying,
his voice easing out of his throat,
beak, body into the pink air
of the early morning. I like it
whatever it is. Sometimes
it seems the only thing in the world
that is without dark thoughts.
Sometimes it seems the only thing
in the world that is without
questions that can't and probably
never will be answered, the
only thing that is entirely content
with the pink, then clear white
morning and, gratefully, says so.

[Annie Riggins · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems feel like exhaling, when you didn’t realize you were holding your breath.

[TarHeelReader · Rating 5 out of 5]

My friend, Pat, recommended Devotions by Mary Oliver as a comfort read back in November. She said this, along with Blue Iris, would be all the Mary Oliver I would ever need. I try to remind myself of that each time I finish a poem, and I want I buy all her other collections of which she has many. Devotions is supposed to be composed of her most loved work. That rings true, since I’ve found each and every poem to be resonant in its own way.

Mary Oliver’s way with words is unmatched. One line can leave me in awe of nature’s raw beauty, or an audible gasp with emotion. Some of the poems address grief, while others leave an openendedness in which I could inject my own emotions and find reassurance in return. That experience is like gold in times like this.

For these reasons and more, Devotions has sat on my nightstand since November when it was purchased, and there it will remain. Easy to pick up and read a poem before bed to close the day with beauty, or one at sunrise for a slice of peace. Even if you think poetry isn’t for you, you should still give Mary Oliver a try some time. Her beautiful words have carried me.

Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com and instagram: www.instagram.com/tarheelreader

[Margene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary is one of my constant companions. This book is one I will be reading today, tomorrow, the next day, the next year, and the next, because I will read it for the rest of my life. Thank you, Mary for giving my love of life and nature voice.

[ria · Rating 5 out of 5]

"listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?"

[Laysee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sep 8, 2019

From New and Selected Poems: Volume Two (2005) by Mary Oliver

It has been six months since I last read Mary Oliver’s poems. This past week as the weight of work bore down on me, I sought refuge in her verse, and read a couple each evening.

In an extraction of eleven poems from her collection of new poems from 2005, Oliver bade us pay attention to the natural world in every season. As she contemplated her role as a poet, she took inspiration from the ease with which nature eloquently declared its charms.

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.

Below are a couple of poems that stood out for me:

White Herons Rises Over Blackwater
Oliver compared her job of putting words on a page to the greater brilliance found in the ‘verbal hilarity’ of a mockingbird or the pure gracefulness of a white heron. These words read like fresh dew drops.

… the white heron
rising
over the swamp
in the darkness,
his yellow eyes
and broad wings wearing
the light of the world
in the light of the world -
ah yes, I see him.
He is exactly
the poem
I wanted to write.

The. North Country
This poem celebrates spring and the thrush that makes its annual appearance.

………..What would spring be
without it? Mostly frogs. But don’t worry, he
arrives, year after year, humble, obedient
and gorgeous. You listen and you know
you could live a better life than you do, be
softer, kinder. And maybe this year you will
be able to do it.

A timely reminder that we can opt to be softer and kinder when our natural bent is to be just the reverse.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Mar 29, 2019

The Truro Bear and Other Adventures (2008) and Red Birds (2008)

It has been a month since I last read from this devotional of poems. It is good to hear Mary Oliver’s voice again. It is always refreshing to see the world through her eyes.

This review is on selected poems from two collections published in 2008: The Truro Bear and Other Adventures and Red Birds. The poems contained her thoughts on two subjects: nature (the heron, the fish, the gray fox, the meadowlark, the panther, the pond, etc.) and self (ambition and dying). It amazes me how the most ordinary things can summon up contemplation that gives us pause.

The Gift
I love walking on the beach and occasionally picking up a seashell that catches my eye. In this poem, Oliver saw a gift in a shell tossed onto the beach by the ‘wind-bruised sea.’ She wondered how it remained intact. The shell now ‘held only the eventual, inevitable emptiness.’ But listen to this lovely thought:

There’s that - there’s always that.
Still what a house
to leave behind!
I held it

like the wisest of books
and imagined
its travels toward my hand.
now, my hand.

Featured in Red Birds (2008) are poems that show her love of animals that share our world. In Night Herons, Oliver observed the herons fishing at night. Only a poet with her sensitivity would have contemplated what it meant for the fish who were ‘full of fish happiness’ one moment and then became the herons’ supper the next. In Invitation, Oliver invited us to linger just to listen to the ‘musical battle’ of the goldfinches because their ‘melodious striving’ revealed the ‘sheer delight and gratitude...of being alive.’ The saddest poem is Red about two gray foxes that were run over by cars and how she carried them to the fields and watched them bleed to death ('Gray fox and gray fox. Red, red, red.')

Featured, too, in Red Birds (2008) are Oliver’s thoughts about mortality, this life, amassing things, and chasing our ambitions. The following poems are the ones that stood out for me.

The Orchard
This is a poem on feeding ambition and her epiphany:

Lo, and I have discovered
how soft bloom

turns to sweet fruit.
Lo, and I have discovered

all winds blow cold
at last,
and the leaves,

so pretty, so many,
vanish....

and the ripeness
of the apple
is its downfall

Sometimes
Death is something that comes ‘out of the dark’ or ‘out of the water.’ It is grotesque given it has ‘the head the size of a cat but muddy and without ears.’ Yet, right in the middle of seven stanzas we read:

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

Self-Portrait
This is a contemplation on getting old. What a lovely poem!

though I’m not twenty
and won’t be again but ah! seventy. And still
in love with life. And still
full of beans.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Feb 17, 2019

Evidence (2009) by Mary Oliver

If you live in the city like I do, I wonder if you have sometimes pined for the woods or a pocket of green where you can be in communion with the natural world. I have discovered over and over again that reading Oliver’s poetry provides a transport of delight to beauty and wonder. With Oliver, nature rambles are the rich soil of contemplation. In this selection of eleven poems from Evidence (2009), Oliver called attention to the business of living and the sanctity of life.

In It Was Early Oliver woke with the dawn to look at the world – the owl under the pines, the mink with his bushy tail, the soft-eared mice, the pines heavy with cones – and was astounded by the many gifts that greeted her, which prompted this thought:

Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.

There is a lovely poem titled To Begin With, The Sweet Grass, in which she considered the ’the witchery of living' and bid us to treasure life, to give both ourselves and others a chance, to evolve and be more than ourselves.

We do one thing or another; we stay the same, or we change.
Congratulations, if
you have changed.

Here’s a question worthy of thought:

And, if you have not been enchanted by this adventure -
your life -
what would do for you?

In the poem, Evidence, Oliver reflected that memory can either be 'a golden bowl, or a basement without light'

Some memories I would give anything to forget.
Others I would not give up upon the point of
death, they are the bright hawks of my life.

And thus, we have a choice over what we wish to hold on to.

Lastly, Oliver invited us to take a lesson from nature:
And consider, always, every day, the determination
of the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles.

Today is a Sabbath Day. You can say I just read a poetic homily.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Jan 30, 2019

From Swan (2010) by Mary Oliver

The seven poems Oliver selected from Swan (2010) for inclusion in Devotions beckoned us to embrace life, especially, to embrace joy. More than just beautiful, they exude a sage-like quality.

These poems were inspired by what is often unobserved - Queen Anne’s Lace in an 'unworked field' making ‘all the loveliness it can’ or a swan ‘rising into the silvery air, an armful of white blossoms, a perfect commotion of silk and linen.’ They also steer our thoughts toward beneficent ways of approaching the hosts of things that worry us or claim our lives. Most of all, I love reading about how she went about walking in the woods.

Here are excerpts from two poems I love. The first is prose-like and too lovely not to reproduce in full.

Don’t hesitate
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches and power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

How I Go To The Woods
Ordinarily I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree…..

...Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible.....

…If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - --

Jan 27, 2019

From A Thousand Mornings (2012) by Mary Oliver

From A Thousand Mornings (2012) is a meditative ensemble of ten poems whose dominant subject is water, be it the sea or the River Ganges. Other poems contain Oliver’s reflections on the approach of winter and her own Life Story against the infinite cycle in nature’s diurnal ebb and flow.

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. There is a pleasing, relaxed contrast to the busyness of the sea pulling away, the gulls walking, seaweeds spilling over themselves. Oliver said,

And here you may find me
on almost any morning
walking along the shore so
light-footed so casual.

I appreciated the understated humor in this delightful poem, I Go Down To The Shore
I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall -
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.

There is no room for self-pity, is there?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

January 26, 2019

From Dog Songs (2013) by Mary Oliver

From Dog Songs (2013) is a heartwarming collection of poems that will resonate with readers who love dogs. Oliver wrote with deep affection for her dogs and devoted a handful to Percy ‘our new dog, named for the beloved poet.’

It is easy to see why one might perchance envy a dog’s life – ‘breaking the new snow with wild feet’ and ‘not thinking, not weighing anything, just running forward.’

Here’s a charming extract from the poem, Little Dog’s Rhapsody in the Night (Percy Three):
Tell me you love me, he says
Tell me again.
Could there be a sweeter arrangement? Over and over
he gets to ask it.
I get to tell.

Aww…. a perfect devotion on an indolent Saturday evening.

- - - - - - - - -

January 25, 2019

From Blue Horses (2014) by Mary Oliver

’Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.’ (‘On Tintern Abbey’, William Worthsworth)

This review update is based on a selection of poems ‘From Blue Horses (2014)'. The eleven poems in this collection expressed the repose and comfort Oliver found in the natural world and quietly invited the reader to share her gratitude. She truly was a poet after the nature lover’s own heart.

The subject of these poems included the slippery green frog, stones on the beach, blueberries, a vulture’s wings, and the gorgeous bluebird. Reading the poems is like going on a nature ramble with her and seeing what we often take for granted with new eyes.

I also appreciate her idea of meditation, which was lounging under a tree and falling asleep. That it can be refreshing is evident in these lines:

On Meditating, Sort Of
‘Of course I wake up finally
thinking, how wonderful to be who I am,
made out of earth and water,
my own thoughts, my own fingerprints -
all that glorious, temporary stuff.’

There is a constancy or fidelity in nature elegantly communicated in my favorite poem in this collection:
Loneliness
I too have known loneliness
I too have known what it is to feel
misunderstood
rejected, and suddenly
not at all beautiful
Oh, Mother Earth,
your comfort is great, your arms never withhold.
It has saved my life to know this.
Your rivers flowing, your roses opening in the morning.
Oh, motions of tenderness.

Read Mary Oliver. We will look at nature quite differently.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Devotions is an exquisite anthology of poems by Mary Oliver who died on Jan 17, 2019. She was 83. This treasure trove, put together by Oliver herself, contains poetry from her first book of poetry, Voyage and Other Poems (1963), to her most recent collection, Felicity (2015).

Reading a couple of Oliver’s poems each morning is like having a devotion, a communion of sorts with the beauty that resides in the goodness around us. This review will be built up bit by bit at the breakfast table.

Jan 23, 2019
From Felicity
This selection of eleven poems is Mary’s reflections on love, her perceptive participation in the natural world, and her discovery of the things that matter. Four poems express the thankfulness one feels towards a beloved (a ‘gift’) and the pangs of impending or actual loss. A handful of poems draw attention to the miracle of redbird chicks chirping for food, whistling swans in a posture of prayer, and lilies bowing to the ‘tug of desire.’ Few poets write about nature with deep moving eloquence. With Oliver, nature almost always awakens an awareness of a larger interior world. Here’s a line from Whistling Swans:

“Rumi said, There is no proof of the soul.
But isn’t the return of spring and how it
springs up in our hearts a pretty good hint?”

There is a thoughtful poem titled Storage on the joy of uncluttering. Below is a fitting response to ‘things’:

Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful
fire! More room in your heart for love,
for the trees! For the birds who own
nothing - the reason they can fly.

Herein lies wisdom.

[Amy Biggart · Rating 5 out of 5]

RIP Mary Oliver, you would’ve loved Hozier’s latest album

[liv ❁]

None of the poems are hitting, so it is officially time to dnf this. I will probably try Oliver again, just with a smaller collection because I am quite saddened about this.

[Angela M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been reading this one poem at a time for a long time now. Beautiful and inspirational.

[༺Kiki༻ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I pre-ordered Devotions without looking at the description, because Mary Oliver! I didn't realize it's a collection of previously published work. I own all of her ebooks, so much of the content isn't new to me. 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.

For those with a Mary Oliver collection, here's what's included:

From: Felicity 2015
I Wake Close to Morning
This Morning
The World I Live In
Whistling Swans
Storage
For Tom Shaw S.S.J.E. (1945–2014)
I Know Someone
That Little Beast
The Pond
I Have Just Said
The Gift

From: Blue Horses 2014
After Reading Lucretius, I Go to the Pond
I Don’t Want to Be Demure or Respectable
Stebbin’s Gulch
Franz Marc’s Blue Horses
On Meditating, Sort Of
Loneliness
Do Stones Feel?
Drifting
Blueberries
The Vulture’s Wings
What Gorgeous Thing

From: Dog Songs 2013
The Storm
Percy (One)
Little Dog’s Rhapsody in the Night (Percy Three)
Percy (Nine)
Benjamin, Who Came From Who Knows Where
The Dog Has Run Off Again
Bazougey
Her Grave
The Poetry Teacher
The First Time Percy Came Back

From: A Thousand Mornings 2012
I Go Down to the Shore
I Happened to Be Standing
Three Things to Remember
Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness
An Old Story
The Instant
Tides
The Poet Compares Human Nature to the Ocean From Which We Came
Life Story
Varanasi

From: Swan 2010
I Worried
I Own a House
Don’t Hesitate
Swan
Passing the Unworked Field
How I Go to the Woods
On the Beach

From: Evidence 2009
Violets
We Shake With Joy
It Was Early
With Thanks to the Field Sparrow, Whose Voice Is So Delicate and Humble
A Lesson From James Wright
Almost a Conversation
To Begin With, the Sweet Grass
Evidence
Prayer
Mysteries, Yes
At the River Clarion

From: The Truro Bear and Other Adventures 2008
The Other Kingdoms
The Gift
Coyote in the Dark, Coyotes Remembered

From: Red Bird 2008
Night Herons
Mornings at Blackwater
The Orchard
Sometimes
Invitation
From This River, When I Was a Child, I Used to Drink
We Should Be Well Prepared
Meadowlark Sings and I Greet Him in Return
Of the Empire
Red
Night and the River
Self-Portrait
With the Blackest of Inks

From:Thirst 2006
When I Am Among the Trees
When the Roses Speak, I Pay Attention
Six Recognitions of the Lord
Gethsemane
The Poet Thinks About the Donkey
Praying
Doesn’t Every Poet Write a Poem About Unrequited Love?
On Thy Wondrous Works I Will Meditate (Psalm 145)
The Chat
Thirst

From: New and Selected Poems, Volume Two 2005
Hum
Lead
Oxygen
White Heron Rises Over Blackwater
Honey Locust
Song for Autumn
Fireflies
The Poet With His Face in His Hands
Wild, Wild
North Country
Terns

From: Blue Iris 2004
Just Lying on the Grass at Blackwater
Sea Leaves
Morning at Blackwater
How Would You Live Then?
How the Grass and the Flowers Came to Exist, a God-Tale

From: Why I Wake Early 2004
Why I Wake Early
Spring at Blackwater: I Go Through the Lessons Already Learned
Mindful
Lingering in Happiness
Daisies
Goldenrod, Late Fall
The Old Poets of China
Logos
Snow Geese
At Black River
Beans
The Arrowhead
Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?

From: Long Life 2004
Just as the Calendar Began to Say Summer
Can You Imagine?
Softest of Mornings
Carrying the Snake to the Garden

From: Owls and Other Fantasies 2003
The Dipper
Spring
While I Am Writing a Poem to Celebrate Summer, the Meadowlark Begins to Sing
Catbird
Backyard

From: What Do We Know 2002
Summer Poem
The Loon
Winter at Herring Cove
Mink
Blue Iris
You Are Standing at the Edge of the Woods
The Roses
Stones
One Hundred White-Sided Dolphins on a Summer Day

From: The Leaf And The Cloud 2000
Flare
From the Book of Time

From: West Wind 1997
Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches
Seven White Butterflies
At Round Pond
Black Oaks
Am I Not Among the Early Risers
Fox
From the Poem “West Wind”

From: White Pine 1994
May
Yes! No!
In Pobiddy, Georgia
Porcupine
Wrens
Mockingbirds
I Found a Dead Fox
Morning Glories
August
Toad
I Looked Up
The Sea Mouse

From: New and Selected Poems, Volume One 1992
The Sun
Goldenrod
When Death Comes
Whelks
Goldfinches
Poppies
Water Snake
White Flowers
Peonies
The Egret
Rice
Rain
Picking Blueberries, Austerlitz, New York, 1957
October

From: House of Light 1990
Some Questions You Might Ask
The Buddha’s Last Instruction
The Summer Day
Spring
Little Owl Who Lives in the Orchard
The Kookaburras
Roses, Late Summer
White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field
Singapore
The Hermit Crab
The Kingfisher
The Swan
Turtle
The Loon on Oak-Head Pond
Five a.M. in the Pinewoods
Some Herons

From: Dream Work 1986
One or Two Things
Morning Poem
Wild Geese
Shadows
The Journey
Poem
Two Kinds of Deliverance
Black Snakes
1945–1985: Poem for the Anniversary
The Sunflowers

From: American Primitive 1983
August
The Kitten
Moles
Clapp’s Pond
First Snow
Ghosts
Skunk Cabbage
The Snakes
White Night
The Fish
Humpbacks
A Meeting
The Roses
Blackberries
Tecumseh
In Blackwater Woods

From: Three Rivers Poetry Journal 1980 and “Three Poems for James Wright” 1982
At Blackwater Pond
The Rabbit
Three Poems for James Wright

From: Twelve Moons 1979
Sleeping in the Forest
Snakes in Winter
Music Lessons
Entering the Kingdom
The Night Traveler
Beaver Moon—the Suicide of a Friend
Last Days
The Black Snake
The Truro Bear
Mussels
Snow Moon—Black Bear Gives Birth
Strawberry Moon
Pink Moon—the Pond
Aunt Leaf
Farm Country
The Lamps

From: The River Styx, Ohio 1972
Learning About the Indians
Going to Walden
Night Flight

From: No Voyage 1963 and 1965
No Voyage
Jack
Beyond the Snow Belt
The Swimming Lesson
On Winter’s Margin
The Return
Morning in a New Land

[cameron · Rating 5 out of 5]

it was so interesting to see which poems mary oliver picked out as her favorites, or as what she thought encompassed her collective works. many of my personal favorites are missing ! if you want to get in to her poetry, this is of course a great starting point as it has a selection that spans her entire career . love love love as always

[Pau · Rating 5 out of 5]

attention is the beginning of devotion attention is the beginning of devotion!!!!!!!!

[Justin Wiggins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Oliver is a bard! Reading this wonderful collection of her poetry compiled from many of her works throughout her life has been a balm to my soul. As of late I have been quite exhausted and weary because of the state of the world, and with so many things going on in my own life. Reading this powerful book by Mary Oliver has been incredibly inspiring, and filled me with encouragement, spiritual nourishment, and has helped me be more present in the here and now. Thank you Mary Oliver!

[Vartika · Rating 4 out of 5]

I began my time with these poems while in the high hills, in a sunny meadow brimming with daisies and birdsong and surrounded by deodars stretching out to meet the sky—so you see how I felt these verses, completely entangled in the way in which Mary Oliver wrote, her unsophisticated but ecstatic dispensing of hope like a clear and sweet stream set never to run out.

Poetry can describe many a feeling with astounding accuracy, but there is no describing poetry. Instead, I will attach here one of my favourite pieces from this volume, its very own, very best review:

To Begin With, The Sweet Grass
1.
Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat
of the sweet grass?
Will the owl bite off its own wings?
Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or
forget to sing?
Will the rivers run upstream?

Behold, I say—behold
the reliability and the finery and the teachings
of this gritty earth gift.

2.
Eat bread and understand comfort.
Drink water, and understand delight.
Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets
are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds
who are drinking the sweetness, who are
thrillingly gluttonous.

For one thing leads to another.
Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.
Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.

And someone's face, whom you love, will be as a star
both intimate and ultimate,
and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful.

And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper:
oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two
beautiful bodies of your lungs.

3.
The witchery of living
is my whole conversation
with you, my darlings.
All I can tell you is what I know.

Look, and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.

It's more than bones.
It's more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It's more than the beating of the single heart.
It's praising.
It's giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life—just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe
still another.

4.
Someday I am going to ask my friend Paulus,
the dancer, the potter,
to make me a begging bowl
which I believe
my soul needs.

And if I come to you,
to the door of your comfortable house
with unwashed clothes and unclean fingernails,
will you put something into it?

I would like to take this chance.
I would like to give you this chance.

5.
We do one thing or another; we stay the same, or we
change.
Congratulations, if
you have changed.

6.
Let me ask you this.
Do you also think that beauty exists for some
fabulous reason?

And, if you have not been enchanted by this adventure—
your life—
what would do for you?

7.
What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.
Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.
That was many years ago.
Since then I have gone out from my confinements,
though with difficulty.
I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart.
I cast them out, I put them on the mush pile.
They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment
somehow or another).

And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger.

And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.

As for the volume as a body: Devotions presents a bouquet of Oliver's poems from across her long career in her own arrangement. Selected by Oliver shortly before her death in 2019, these 200-odd poems are ordered in reverse—from Felicity (2015) to No Voyage and Other Poems (1963). 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.

Of course, much has been said of Oliver's work—that it is too simple, or too naïve, or that its cadence derives not from metre but from a sense of harmony that many of us have been too dulled to attempt to feel. The critics can relax: Oliver herself did not want to live forever, only to be remembered if at all; as she says in one of the poems included in this collection; as "a bride married to amazement". And that she was. That we all can feel when we go out seeking the world through her words. From where I stand, Devotions is a wonderful place to start.

*

Some other poems from this volume that I enjoyed:
• How I Go to The Woods
• Sometimes
• Lingering in Happiness
• Black Oaks
• Of the Empire
• Coyotes in the Dark, Coyotes Remembered
• Am I Not Among The Early Risers
• Night Flight
• Morning in a New Land

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

With Mary Oliver's recent passing, I wanted to read her selected poems in order to see why she was so popular and also to find enjoyment in them as well. My first advice for this book and other selected or collected poems of poets is to read them starting with the early books and moving forward from there. You will see how the poet develops.

I cannot give these poems any accolades for their craft or uniqueness. They reminded me of the old Swanson TV dinners in foil trays: uniformly prepared and only requiring heating. Nothing is demanded of the reader; it is there for easy consumption and no more. A poet like Kay Ryan, for example, requires a thinking interaction with her readers. Oliver does not.

I can see why, though, that the poems are popular. They are spiritual and have an uplifting quality to them. They express a profound love and appreciation of nature. There's nothing wrong with that, but I tend to believe that poetry demands more. I think Oliver would have been a great nature essayist, as the writing is mini-essays rather than poems.

[julieta · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel totally connected with Mary Olivers images;
nature, trees, insects, spirituality, joy.
Just wonderful and enlightening.

[Isa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will turn back to the myriad of poems I have marked in this book. Mary Oliver has a beautiful way with words, and I honestly want some of these to be carved into my skin. I will return to this review if I do decide to tattoo her words on me (likely). Although some poems didn't stand out to me much, a large portion of these selected works were absolutely necessary for me. Honestly feels like I've picked to read these at an essential point in my life. Thank you Mary Oliver!

[Kimber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Oliver doesn't just write about nature, she writes about our Oneness with nature. She comes across her insights, often, in a state of Bliss. To read her is a spiritual experience in itself.

In this collection of her selected poems, these are her favorites, not necessarily my favorites. I have loved her smaller, more intimate collections that all seemed to harmonize together. 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.

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.

[lizzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps the most peaceful thing I have ever read.

[elisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

this might have healed something inside of me that i didn’t even know needed healing

[⊹ Ellie ⊹ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took my time reading this collection of poems over the last 8 months. A poem a day, give or take. Each one is like a small offering of sunshine, gratitude, peace, perspective, and a connection to the natural world. Sit in the sun, touch some grass, and read these to heal something within yourself.

My favorites:
I Worried
Evidence
Of the Empire
The Sun
Picking Blueberries, Austerlitz, New York, 1957
The Summer Day

“Of course I wake up finally
thinking, how wonderful to be who I am,
made out of earth and water,
my own thoughts, my own fingerprints–
all that glorious, temporary stuff.”

“Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super hot fire. At some point in their life, everyone should rise early, sit outside, and read Mary Oliver.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful collection of poetry.. I got it as a birthday present more than half a year ago and have been sporadically taking it out to read a few at a time. The thing with large collections of poetry is that it feels a lot harder to appreciate individual poems if I’m tearing through, so I really tried to take my time.
The perfect collection to read while sitting in the garden on a crisp spring morning wrapped in a wool blanket. Mary Oliver’s poems make you appreciate nature in a different way. She always emphasises observation rather than interference; nature is gentle and perfect and filled with beautiful subtleties. And if you spend enough time looking, really looking and appreciating every detail, you will notice them too. Her poems are just little breaths of fresh air.

[౨ৎ · Rating 5 out of 5]

“To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”

Attention is the beginning of devotion

Be still my soul and steadfast

[Elizabeth☮ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did it! I completed the collection. The poems are listed in reverse order with the most recent poems first and the earliest poems last. This is an interesting way to take in the work of Mary Oliver. The poems are all related to nature in some manner, but I feel the earlier poems are more abstract.

I’m so glad I bought myself this book. I have so many lines underlined. I love it.

UPDATE: When I send any type of card to a friend, I will pull lines of poetry from this book. Most of my cards have to do with loss and there are so many beautiful lines in the collection that speak to this topic in a soft and serene way.

[endlessbookclub · Rating 3 out of 5]

Devotions is a large compilation of author’s selected poems written over the course of decades.
Some of these poems resonated with me so deeply and I could instantly fathom how remarkable her writing was through her short, succinct poems.
However, there were a few poems where I struggled to decipher, let alone comprehend. It got a little too abstract and subjective (as it is with the nature of poetry), but that isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy it.

3.5/5