Ezra's Bookshelf

Devotions

by Mary Oliver · 481 pages · ~8.5 hrs

FictionClimate & Environment

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Mary Oliver selected these poems from five decades of her work, creating a personal anthology of what she called her 'devotions.' Oliver, who died in 2019, was one of America's most beloved poets, known for accessible verse that observed the natural world with passionate attention. The poems in this collection move from her earliest work in the 1960s through her final years, showing the development and consistency of her vision. Oliver wrote about birds, trees, ponds, and walking, but her true subject was what these observations taught her about being alive. Her language is clear and direct; she distrusted obscurity and wanted her poems to be useful to readers seeking connection with the living world. The collection demonstrates Oliver's range within her chosen territory: some poems are ecstatic, others elegiac, still others quietly instructive. She drew on Whitman, Emerson, and the Romantic tradition while creating something distinctly her own. For readers new to Oliver, this volume provides an ideal introduction; for those who know her work, it offers her own sense of what mattered most.

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