Felicity

Mary Oliver

Oliver s longtime fans and those who seek spiritual renewal will find themselves a worthy guide in this sagacious, pantheistic read.   Publishers Weekly 

A breezy, inviting collection of love poems that celebrates the divine as much as it does the natural world or human relationships . . . An eloquent celebration of simple joy from one of America s most beloved poets. The Washington Post

One of the astonishing aspects of Oliver s work is the consistency of tone over this long period [of her career]. What changes is an increased focus on nature and an increased precision with language that has made her one of our very best poets . . . There is no complaint in Ms. Oliver s poetry, no whining, but neither is there the sense that life is in any way easy . . . These poems sustain us rather than divert us. Although few poets have fewer human beings in their poems than Mary Oliver, it is ironic that few poets also go so far to help us forward. Stephen Dobyns, New York Times Book Review

It has always seemed, across her 15 books of poetry, five of prose and several essays and chapbooks, that Mary Oliver might leave us at any minute. Even a 1984 Pulitzer Prize couldn t pin her to the ground. She d change quietly into a heron or a bear and fly or walk off forever. Her poems contain windows, doors, transformations, hints on how to escape the body; there s the glamour of death and the life after the earth-life . . . The new poems teem with creation: ravens, bees, hawks, box turtles, bears. The landscape is Thoreauvian: ponds, marsh, grass and cattails; New England s salt brightness ; and fields in pale twilight. The poems from Why I Wake Early (2004) are, in contrast, full of white things and untrimmable light ; from Owls and Other Fantasies (2003), of watery sounds, singing, rain; from West Wind (1997), of starry distances and traveling.   Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review

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