A Thousand Mornings: Poems
The New York Times-bestselling collection of poems from celebrated poet Mary Oliver In A Thousand Mornings, Mary Oliver returns to the imagery that has come to define her life's work, transporting us to the marshland and coastline of her beloved home, Provincetown, Massachusetts. Whether studying the leaves of a tree or mourning her treasured dog Percy, Oliver is open to the teachings contained in the smallest of moments and explores with startling clarity, humor, and kindness the mysteries of our daily experience.
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Community Reviews
For me, reading Mary Oliver is like meeting a rarely seen, but much-loved and admired friend; a conversation and a glimpse into their life feels like a gift, but leaves a surprisingly aching sense of loss. Her writing has consistently been self-reflective observances of and within nature, unexpectedly exposing our own poverty of a life without. In her world, she approaches life with a soft, and open inquisitiveness to the (mostly) silent earthly elders; the aging black oak, the sea (that speaks to her), wrens that pray, and ants that squirm for life in the midst of death. She writ large a life in nature, and though her work is not strongly political, she makes clear her concern in "On Traveling To Beautiful Places"
"But it's late, for all of us,
and in truth the only ship there is
is the ship we are all on
Burning the world as we go."
For a poet who has spent her life silently observing the world as if a "pearl of water on the eider's glossy back," it must seem hopeless. What is most striking, is what is absent; anger, blame, indictments, rants, jokes, irony. The lack of these things, which are so much a part of the culture, might target her as a quaint nature writer, but this label would be a mistake. She doesn't have to write apocalyptic warnings about global warming, or fracking directly to get us thinking about what we're losing; she only has to let us glimpse in on her life that has been indelibly shaped by the lessons of nature.
LINES WRITTEN IN THE DAYS
OF GROWING DARKNESS
Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends
Into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out
to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married
to the vitality of what will be?
I don't say
it's easy, but
what else will do
if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?
So let us go on, cheerfully enough,
this and every crisping day,
though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.
"But it's late, for all of us,
and in truth the only ship there is
is the ship we are all on
Burning the world as we go."
For a poet who has spent her life silently observing the world as if a "pearl of water on the eider's glossy back," it must seem hopeless. What is most striking, is what is absent; anger, blame, indictments, rants, jokes, irony. The lack of these things, which are so much a part of the culture, might target her as a quaint nature writer, but this label would be a mistake. She doesn't have to write apocalyptic warnings about global warming, or fracking directly to get us thinking about what we're losing; she only has to let us glimpse in on her life that has been indelibly shaped by the lessons of nature.
LINES WRITTEN IN THE DAYS
OF GROWING DARKNESS
Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends
Into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out
to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married
to the vitality of what will be?
I don't say
it's easy, but
what else will do
if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?
So let us go on, cheerfully enough,
this and every crisping day,
though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.
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