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.
In her seventh book, Oliver--Pulitzer Prize winner for her 1984 collection, American Primitive ( LJ 2/15/83)--carries readers into her vivid landscape and involves them in her process of discovery and recognition--from the tiny white spot in the distance, to the realization that it's a bird, to the name and song of the bird. This is a poet who rhetorically asks: "how could there be a day in your whole life/ that doesn't have its splash of happiness?" Lyrical lines move gracefully across the page as the spirituality mounts. One is tempted to call these poems too "poetic" or "romantic," but Oliver does not avoid nature's cruelty. With original, compelling vision, she discovers the same "splash of happiness" in the snow shining around a beggar boy or the smile of a woman cleaning toilets in Indonesia. Recommended. - Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," New York Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Oliver's poems are thoroughly convincing--as genuine, moving, and implausible as the first caressing breeze of spring. -The New York Times Book Review
A private person by nature, Mary Oliver has given very few interviews over the years. Instead, she prefers to let her work speak for itself. And speak it has, for the past five decades, to countless readers. The New York Times recently acknowledged Mary Oliver as "far and away, this country's best-selling poet." Born in a small town in Ohio, Oliver published her first book of poetry in 1963 at the age of 28; No Voyage and Other Poems, originally printed in the UK by Dent Press, was reissued in the United States in 1965 by Houghton Mifflin. Oliver has since published many works of poetry and prose. As a young woman, Oliver studied at Ohio State University and Vassar College, but took no degree. She lived for several years at the home of Edna St. Vincent Millay in upper New York state, companion to the poet's sister Norma Millay. It was there, in the late '50s, that she met photographer Molly Malone Cook. For more than forty years, Cook and Oliver made their home together, largely in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where they lived until Cook's death in 2005. Over the course of her long and illustrious career, Oliver has received numerous awards. Her fourth book, American Primitive, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984. She has also received the Shelley Memorial Award; a Guggenheim Fellowship; an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Achievement Award; the Christopher Award and the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award for House of Light; the National Book Award for New and Selected Poems; a Lannan Foundation Literary Award; and the New England Booksellers Association Award for Literary Excellence. Oliver's essays have appeared in Best American Essays 1996, 1998, 2001; the Anchor Essay Annual 1998, as well as Orion, Onearth and other periodicals. Oliver was editor of Best American Essays 2009. Oliver's books on the craft of poetry, A Poetry Handbook and Rules for the Dance, are used widely in writing programs. She is an acclaimed reader and has read in practically every state as well as other countries. She has led workshops at various colleges and universities, and held residencies at Case Western Reserve University, Bucknell University, University of Cincinnati, and Sweet Briar College. From 1995, for five years, she held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College. She has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from The Art Institute of Boston (1998), Dartmouth College (2007) and Tufts University (2008). Oliver currently lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the inspiration for much of her work.
51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars"Wake up!" is the tender, fierce cry of this book..., July 18, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: House of Light (Paperback)
I've read just about everything that Mary Oliver has written...and something about "House of Light" makes me sit up and LISTEN to the natural world. These poems -- I think especially of "The Kookaburras" -- invite us to become more accountable for every thought, action, and gesture. Mary's poems break my heart open again and again; they're soul-food for me; they remind me of what is essential. Mary is a compassionate witness for the exquisite minutae of life.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 starsIlluminating!! Oliver is brilliant..., April 27, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: House of Light (Paperback)
After reading "House of Light" by Mary Oliver (the book was a gift for my sixteenth birthday a few years back) I began to write. It is inspirational ! Oliver captures the essence of each animal, plant, and situation. My personal favorites are: "The Buddha's Last Instruction" and "The Hermit Crab" The book is refreshing and a must have for poetry lovers!
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The poems bring us close to nature and enable us to create a link of awareness that is sometimes soft, sometimes shattering. We are connected closely to the animals and birds - "The Kookaburras" made me cry. The reality of death is treated in a way that makes us pay attention and live NOW and know that when we are enveloped by that vast darkness, as everything eventually is, it will be alright.
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