American Primitive: Amazon.ca: Mary Oliver: Books

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by Mary Oliver

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Inside This Book (Learn More)

First Sentence
When the blackberries hang swollen in the woods, in the brambles nobody owns, I spend all day among the high branches, reaching my ripped arms, thinking of nothing, cramming the black honey of summer into my mouth; all day my body accepts what it is. Read the first page

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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover

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15 Reviews

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Average Customer Review

3.7 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars A True Classic of Contemporary Poetry, Jul 9 2004

By	Juan Mobili (Valley Cottage, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

To read any poem by Mary Oliver is to be in the presence of the exquisite potential of language for marrying beauty and wisdom. Rarely a poet, so inclined not to impose her view nor her beliefs on anyone, can leave such profound impression on how we may come to see the world. And to read -to live, really- each poem of "American Primitive" is to educate your heart.
Someone said, very appropriately so, that Oliver's poems may have the less humans in them than any contemporary poet's body of work, yet in the case of this magnificent book, two of its most stunning choices -"John Chapman" and "The Lost Children"- has Oliver bring the same keen compassion and awe for the tragic and the gracious in being our kind, that she does when speaking of foxes, mushrooms, or crows and owls.
"John Chapman," for instance, contains some of the wisest lines about being one of us, humans, that you will find in American poetry. Chapman was the real John Appleseed who "thought little, / on a rainy night, / of sharing the shelter of a hollow log touching / flesh with any creatures there" and, yet, as a woman in the poems recalls "he spoke / only once of women and his gray eyes / brittled into ice. "Some / are deceivers," he whispered, and she felt / the pain of it, remembered it / into her old age."
I wonder if Oliver chose him because he lived his life during those times when this country was learning to be this country -and perhaps because of it- we were, for the last time, as close as a species to the rest of nature as we ever had.
"The Lost Children" is also about those times too, yet about those of one kind taken by those who were the natives to this land. It is an amazing feat of truth and empathy, as much as proof of Oliver's mastery of the poem's form and mood as in her capacity to imagine how the disappearance of these children could be as much a calling to another wondrous life and such grief and emptiness to those who will not see them anymore, at the same time.
Given the size limitations stipulated for these reviews, I'm not able to comment in the rest of these poems in the way their stunning depth and beauty deserve. The book's title -American Primitive- reaches a particular poignancy, for me, with every reading, "primitive" means essential, original, a natural and fierce morality.
As she says so certainly "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.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing, Feb 12 2004

By A Customer

Beautiful. A great place to start if a reader has not read Oliver before. Not to be missed.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Poetry that celebrates the rhythms of life, May 31 2002

By	Michael J. Mazza (Pittsburgh, PA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

I was really impressed by "American Primitive," the collection of poems by Mary Oliver. I knew that this book was special when I got to the third poem, "The Kitten." This poem about a stillborn kitten stopped me dead in my tracks. Painful yet beautiful, tragic yet transcendent, it sets a powerful tone for the collection as a whole.

And "American Primitive" does indeed strike me as a unified whole. It consists mostly of poems about American wildlife, with some poems that touch on people in United States history. The poems are often about the cycles of life, including birth, death, and loss. In some poems eating becomes a transcendent act that points to the connectedness of all life.

Oliver writes about mushrooms, blackberries, crows, egrets, deer, snakes, whales, and other living things. She also writes about such natural phenomena as snow and sunlight. Her language is often striking and sensuous. I love the lines from "Spring" where she says "The rain / rubs its shining hands all over me." With her attentiveness to the natural world, Oliver reminded me somewhat of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, but she really has a voice and vision all her own in "American Primitive."

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Most recent customer reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars A Cultural Icon (...which doesn't bode well for our culture)
Three Tenors, Riverdance, Deepak Chopra... Add Mary Oliver to the list of contemporary swill that bloats our self-indulgent and self-important mass culture. Read more

Published on Sep 8 2001 by j.reilly@netcom.com

5.0 out of 5 stars If you have a soul, you'll love American Primitive....
If you don't, you just might find it here. Oliver writes in snatches of brilliant lyrical imagery, yet weaves those bits together without fail into something larger than the... Read more

Published on Mar 28 2001

5.0 out of 5 stars This Pulitzer Prize winner humbles me.
This book humbles me. I have been writing poetry for many years, and I'm an avid reader of poetry. I am amazed by the level and awareness Mary Oliver brings to the surface of... Read more

Published on Mar 31 2000 by R. Frost

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book!
Very powerful use of language,...in a subtle way. The use of image-metaphor to our state of "being" is awesome. Mary Oliver is a brilliant author. Read more

Published on Mar 28 2000 by kdenzer

5.0 out of 5 stars American Primitive
A wonderful book that moves me everytime I read it. It is a book that explores the natural world and how nature merges with our own internal landscapes. An important book!

Published on Mar 23 2000 by Michael Spring

1.0 out of 5 stars Trash for soft-headed saps
If you're idea of naturalism is wearing Birkenstock sandals, talking about "animal nature in the eyes of wolves" while sipping overpriced twig tea from your local health... Read more

Published on Sep 20 1999

5.0 out of 5 stars The elegance of mastery.
Anyone having had a close study of the body of human verse would recognize the mastery in Mary Oliver's poetry. Read more

Published on May 9 1999

2.0 out of 5 stars I'm glad I read Dream Work before American Primitive!
American Primitive won the Pulitzer prize but did not win my heart, my mind, my thoughts. I could not become enthusiastic or excited about the poet's words. Read more

Published on Jan 8 1999

1.0 out of 5 stars Hollow, self-satisfied attempt at "Art"
Lacking any sense of cohesion and continuity, these poems jangle the nerves. Oliver vainly attempts to set a tone and, without fail, manages to hit that wrong "note" --... Read more

Published on Nov 22 1998

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, accesible American poetry.
Mary Oliver's American Primitive is one of the finer books of poetry written in America in the last fifty years. Read more

Published on Sep 17 1998 by jbridges@haverford.edu

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	68% buy the item featured on this page: American Primitive 3.7 out of 5 stars (15) CDN$ 12.78
	32% buy New and Selected Poems: Volume One 5.0 out of 5 stars (1) CDN$ 13.10