Mary Oliver

With piercing clarity and craftsmanship, Mary Oliver has fashioned an unforgettable poem of questioning and discovery, about what is observable and what is not, about what passes and what persists. As the U. S. Poet Laureate, Stanley Kunitz, has said: "Mary Oliver's poetry is fine and deep it reads like a blessing. Her special gift is to connect us with our sources in the natural world, its beauties and terrors and mysteries and consolations." The Boston Globe has called Mary Oliver "a great poet . . . she is amazed but not blinded." And the Miami Herald has said: "The gift of Oliver's poetry is that she communicates the beauty she finds in the world and makes it unforgettable."

A collection of forty poems that explore the transformation of love and nature over time

Forty poems deal with the bonds between people and the natural world, the writing experience, and the importance of silence

Dream Work, a collection of forty-five poems, follows both chrono­logically and logically Mary Oliver's American Primitive, which won her the Pulitzer Prize for the finest book of poetry published in 1983 by an American poet. The depth and diversity of perceptual awareness—so steadfast and radiant in American Primitive—continue in Dream Work. She has turned her attention in these poems to the solitary and difficult labors of the spirit—to accepting the truth about one's personal world, and to valuing the triumphs while transcending the fail­ures of human relationships. Whether by way of inheritance—as in her poem about the Holocaust—or through a painful glimpse into the present—as in "Acid," a poem about an injured boy begging in the streets of Indonesia—the events and tendencies of history take on a new importance here. More deeply than in her previous volumes, the sensibility behind these poems has merged with the world. Mary Oliver's willingness to be joyful continues, deepened by self-awareness, by experience, and by choice.

Winner of a 1991 Christopher Award Winner of the 1991 "Boston Globe" Lawrence L. Winship Book Award This collection of poems by Mary Oliver once again invites the reader to step across the threshold of ordinary life into a world of natural and spiritual luminosity.

Brief poems describe nature, mortality, a missing child, the lives of animals, and the beauty of the seasons.

In her fourth volume of poetry, Twelve Moons, Pulitzer Prize-winning Mary Oliver continues to explore the alluring, yet well-nigh inaccessible kingdoms of nature and human relationships, and man's profound, persistent desire for a joyous union with them. These vibrant, magical poems pulse with an aching awareness of nature's unaffected beauty. Her absorbing intimate vision leads us into the natural and human kingdoms we only fleetingly grasp.