Done with thirteen books for this month so far. I’d like to go back reading the works of Mary Oliver. The last published book I read before she died was Devotions. A close friend living in the US gave me a hardbound copy. It features more than 200 poems some of which were also published in her other books. Nature is always featured in her lovely words, embracing the gift of long walks within the woods, the serenity of standing still, admiring the moment and the now. Not long ago, I blogged about her book A Thousand Mornings, another lovely collection of her poems. Every time I read it, I love the smooth feel of the dust jacket. She always wrote about her beloved home in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She wrote about ordinary things that most of us simply ignore. Upstream, is a collection of essays that gives us a fuller picture of how she was as a writer. I learned about Emerson, Whitman and Poe through this lovely and small hardbound volume. She ended her essays with these words, “I don’t know if I am heading toward heaven or that other, dark place, but I know I have already lived in heaven for fifty years. Thank you, Provincetown.” I also have a copy of her New and Selected Poems Volume One. She wrote:
“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.
I don’t want want to end up simply having visited this world.“
Her book Dog Songs tells us about the special bond between human and a dog. She tells us about her beloved Percy and the other dogs which emerged as fellow travelers and guides teaching about connection and the joys that nature brings.
I haven’t read the following books yet:
Blue Iris
Blue Horses
Thirst
House of Light
Felicity
There you go, an afternoon spent with one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver.
Dreams And Escapes 