Mary Oliver Reads "The Summer Day"

[close] Mary Oliver reads her poem, "The Summer Day," Copyright 1990.

"The Summer Day" first appeared in House of Light (Beacon Press, 1990), and has been reprinted in New and Selected Poems, Volume 1 (Beacon Press, 1992) and The Truro Bear and Other Adventures (Beacon Press, 2008).

This poem, which many refer to as "The Grasshopper," is one of the best-known and often quoted of Mary Oliver's work. This recording of the poet reading her own work is from "At Blackwater Pond," an audio CD of Mary Oliver reading forty of her poems.

Over the course of her long and illustrious career, Mary Oliver has received numerous awards. Her fourth book, American Primitive, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984. She has also received the Shelley Memorial Award; a Guggenheim Fellowship; an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Achievement Award; the Christopher Award and the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award for House of Light; the National Book Award for New and Selected Poems; a Lannan Founda