What Do We Know: Poems [Hardcover]

Mary Oliver (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2, 2002

For the many admirers of Mary Oliver's dazzling poetry and luminous vision, as well as for those who may only now be discovering her work, What Do We Know will be a revelation and, in the words of Stanley Kunitz, "a blessing." These forty poems—of observing, of searching, of pausing, of astonishment, of giving thanks—embrace in every sense the natural world, its unrepeatable moments and its ceaseless cycles. Mary Oliver evokes unforgettable images—from one hundred white-sided dolphins on a summer day to bees that have memorized every stalk and leaf in a field—even as she reminds us, after Emerson, that "the invisible and imponderable is the sole fact."What was most wonderful?The sea, and its wide shoulders;the sea and its triangles;the sea lying back on its long athlete's spine.What did you think was happening?The green breast of the hummingbird;the eye of the pond;the wet face of the lily;the bright, puckered knee of the broken oak;the red tulip of the fox's mouth;the up-swing, the down-pour, the frayed sleeve of the first snow—so the gods shake us from our sleep.—from "Gratitude"

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A great poet...She is amazed but not blinded." -- Boston Globe

"Oliver's poems are thoroughly convincing--as genuine, moving, and implausible as the first caressing breeze of spring." -- New York Times

"One would think that poems about self, nature, death, and ecstasy had run their course in English. Think again." -- Chicago Tribune

"The gift of Oliver's poetry is that she communicates the beauty she finds in the world and makes it unforgettable." -- Miami Herald

"What good company Mary Oliver is!" -- Los Angeles Times

"Who wouldn't be part of Mary Oliver's world?" -- Appalachian Review

About the Author

Mary Oliver is the author of more than ten volumes of poetry and prose, including American Primitive, New and Selected Poems, A Poetry Handbook, West Wind, Rules for the Dance, Winter Hours, and, most recently, The Leaf and the Cloud, which was both a Boston Globe and a Book Sense best seller. Her many accolades include the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Lannan Literary Award; in 1999 she received the New England Book Award for Literary Excellence from the New England Booksellers Association.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 88 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (April 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 030680994X
• ISBN-13: 978-0306809941
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 7.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,531,150 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "So the gods shake us from our sleep.", April 19, 2002

By 

G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What Do We Know: Poems (Hardcover)

With her characteristic sense of wonder, Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Mary Oliver, returns to the natural world in this new collection of forty poems. "Walking out into all of this with nowhere to go," she writes, "and no task undertaken but to turn the pages of this beautiful world over and over, in the world of my mind" ("A Settlement," p. 45). Whether she's observing a hundred dolphins on a summer day, a mockingbird, a black snake on a flat rock, an owl with eyes "like burning moons" (p. 12), the "single-mindedness" of a hummingbird (p. 14), stones, a "beautifully acrobatic" raven (p. 16), a trapped turtle, clams ("each one is a small life, but sometimes long, if its place in the universe is not found out," p. 26), a heron, bumble bees that "have memorized/ every stalk and leaf/ of the field" (p. 30), crows "as cheerful as saints, or thieves of the small job" (p. 34), a lark, "the wet face of the lily" (p. 41), oranges, moonlight, a dead bat ("in death/ it was a mad architecture--/ its joints were too many; it shed/ all sound, all power--became/ a little heap of stiffness/ with a monkey face" (p. 46), a blue iris, or "the silence; the blank, white, glittering sublime" of an early snow (p. 57), Oliver pays attention to life deeply. Her poetry is earthy yet spiritual, simple yet profound, and life-affirming without exception. In my favorite poem in the collection, "The Loon," I, too, experienced the "rapture of being alive" upon hearing "the small,/ perfect voice" that caused Oliver to pause from her reading at four a.m. (p. 64).

Reading Mary Oliver always reminds me of why I enjoy poetry. She has the ability to reveal heaven in a wildflower, and the wonders of God in every creature. In addition to this book of poetry, I also highly recommend Oliver's NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (1993) and THE LEAF AND THE CLOUD (2000).

G. Merritt

47 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Preparing for eternity, April 6, 2002

By 

"helflower" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What Do We Know: Poems (Hardcover)

I was worried about what this book of poems would be like--like so many of us, I am madly in love with this poet, and want her to go on forever. The urgency in the love song to the world that The Leaf and the Cloud was has been replaced with a coolness and a lightness that is exquisitely beautiful once you get over the fact that so much of this is about death. The supernatural is the theme of this book, with god with a capital G and angels and ghosts. I have never read her more vulnerable or as far away from us. But this is a beautiful book, a fantastic transition from her last works, showing what a truly great American poet she is.