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New and Selected Poems (Hardcover)

by Oliver (Author)

5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)

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Product Details

Hardcover: 255 pages
Publisher: Fitzhenry & Whiteside (May 22 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0807068187
ISBN-13: 978-0807068182
Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 2.5 cm
Shipping Weight: 499 g

Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #604,977 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in this category:
#37 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( O ) > Oliver, Mary

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Product Description

From Amazon.com

As Diane Wakoski has noted, the power of Mary Oliver's Frost-influenced pastoral writing is in her ability to cast a spell, to create "the illusion that the natural world is graspable." Oliver's fierce independence, beautiful imagery, and love and knowledge of the natural world are all driven by a searching mind, expressed in poems that make for good company. In Some Questions You Might Ask, Oliver gives us this one to chew over: "Is the soul solid, like iron?/ or is it tender and breakable, like/ the wings of a moth in the beak of an owl?" Highly recommended.

From Publishers Weekly

This collection brings together poetry from eight of Oliver's previously published books and 30 new poems. In all of her work, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Primitive , Oliver, "full of curiosity," writes about the natural world, engaging the entwined processes of life and death. "Amazement" figures in her persistent attention to things seen: "If you notice anything / it leads you to notice / more / and more." Description then leads to meditation, a leap beyond the material world. Fundamentally religious in impulse, many of the poems move quickly away from concrete description. Metaphors are not quite grounded in the real; rather, they are asserted, declared. Of a bear the one poem's speaker notes, "all day I think of her-- / her white teeth, her wordlessness, her perfect love." Even though this bear flicks the grass with her tongue, sharpens her claws against the "silence/of the trees," the reader cannot quite see her. It's as if Oliver reports on mysteries rather than embodying them. And so, despite its undeniable music, her work too often becomes rhetorical; too often its earnestness turns preachy and its feeling becomes sentimental.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Inside This Book (Learn More)

Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover

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	65% buy the item featured on this page: New and Selected Poems 5.0 out of 5 stars (17)
	16% buy New and Selected Poems: Volume One 5.0 out of 5 stars (1) CDN$ 13.10
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Customer Reviews

17 Reviews

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5.0 out of 5 stars (17 customer reviews)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Add my name to the list, Sep 28 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: New and Selected Poems (Paperback)

I've wanted to write a review of this book for a long time, but I've always resisted. After all, I thought, what can I add to what so many people have said about Mary Oliver and her wonderful poems? Well, as it turns out, there is something. No one, of all the readers who have written in, has singled out my favorite poem. I won't say it's better than anyone else's favorite; we all have our own special pathways to the heart, and different poems reach different people. But I've carried a clipping of it with me for years, since it appeared in an earlier collection, and I'm thrilled to see again in this new one. If only one person decides to read this book on the basis of this poem, it will be worth it for me. The poem is called "Late Spring Evening":

What can we say to these junebugs
on the rebound from the screens we raise
and swooning heavily to the porch floor?
Do we dare ask them their reasons
when we know they'll never ask ours?
Let's be content to guess, but not insist,
it's something to do with porchlights.

Unconsciousness
must be a consolation to them, batted by the cat,
but should we be consoled
by the unsought blessing of their presence?
Fly from the light, save yourselves, we'll tell them,
grateful they'll never heed us.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Power, Elegance, and Beauty!, Sep 25 2003

By	Jacob M. Winkler (Boulder, Colorado) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Mary Oliver writes consistently moving, earthy poetry that reaches deep into what it means to live. I find her work magical, especially the way her writing about natural phenomena and animal relationships means so much to actual interactions with people. What's wonderful here is that Mary Oliver writes about the meta-story of human experience. Instead of delivering the poignancy of a personal story of romance, tragedy or success in the personal sphere, Oliver takes an image from nature and her experience with nature and weaves a story that has relevance for all people, no matter their cultural background. This writing could inspire the leaders of our civilization just as much as it could inspire tribal chiefs of aboriginal people. For example:

Sunrise

You can
die for it--
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, and it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poet of the Natural World, Feb 16 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: New and Selected Poems (Paperback)

My copy is dog-eared, and I've bought copies for friends in Ireland, Germany and Ecuador, as well as at home. Oliver's poems of the natural world help us see our oneness with All That Is. I hear her poems read in my Buddhist sangha, my Catholic parrish and also at AA meetings. I'd give her six stars for this book if I could!

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A profound collection
After Sept. 11, I read this book each night before going to sleep. The poems give me hope, help me focus on what's real and beautiful in the world, and inspire me. Read more

Published on Jan 7 2002

5.0 out of 5 stars Lovely poetry
This is a fantastic book of poetry. The way Ms Oliver captures nature in her words is incredible. She presents such vivid images that you feel you are there seeing what she... Read more

Published on Oct 3 2001 by merrymousies

5.0 out of 5 stars "So this is how you pray."
In a recent interview, poet Jane Hirshfield said: "As a flint holds the spark, each good poem holds a hidden bit of life--knowledge that its reading releases in us and we in... Read more

Published on Aug 22 2001 by G. Merritt

5.0 out of 5 stars the emotion of wildness
I cannot name a poet who has moved me more deeply by illuminating the many joyous connections between our hearts and the larger, wild world. Read more

Published on Sep 19 2000 by Daniel L. Cox