White Pine: Poems and Prose Poems [Hardcover]

Mary Oliver (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1994

In her first collection since winning the National Book Award in 1993, Mary Oliver writes of the silky bonds between every person and the natural world, of the delight of writing, of the value of silence. “[Her] poems are...as genuine, moving and implausible as the first caressing breeze of spring” (New York Times).

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Wherein the poet continues her literary program with much the same sort of excellent poems about nature, the connection between the natural and the physical, and the tug-of-war between the familiar and the mysterious. I Found A Dead Fox, seemingly influenced by William Carlos Williams, gives one a good sense of the imagery in this fine collection. Oliver writes: "I found a dead fox / beside the gravel road,/ curled up inside the big/ iron wheel/ of an old tractor." Toads, mockingbirds, and afternoons of chopping wood fill these pages, as do beautiful, provocative images. Highly recommended.

From Booklist

The appetite for Oliver's poems has stayed strong after the very real pleasures of her National Book Award-winning New and Selected Poems (1992). This lovely volume contains 40 new poems, 40 blessings. Oliver's attentiveness to nature is active and hands-on. She walks through meadows, climbs trees, and, most of all, stares intently at copperheads, snails, hummingbirds, a dog devouring a dead fawn. She looks and looks, imprinting all that she sees deep in the glowing crucible of her mind, then pours her molten visions out into the molds of her poems where they cool to golden perfection. Elegant and bold, they warm back up once we hold them in our heart. We feel her exaltation over moments that change everything-- when deer walk up and touch her hands, when she watches hundreds of swans land on a lake in Ohio--and respond affirmatively to her admonishment: "to pay attention, this is our endless and proper work." We gladly pay attention to Oliver. Donna Seaman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 55 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt; 1 edition (November 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151001316
• ISBN-13: 978-0151001316
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 7.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,815,795 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

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Impressed with this first exposure to Oliver., April 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: White Pine: Poems and Prose Poems (Paperback)

An old man I know, who lives a reclusive life with 10 aging cats as his only companions, is the person I have to thank for turning me on to Mary Oliver. We live in a rural area and can vouch for the accuracy and honesty of her work. Deer, foxes, and a multitude of birds are common sights for us, as they are apparently for Mary Oliver, but through her poet's eye we are reminded not to take for granted our great good fortune in living here. We can read her words and say, "Yes. I remember that." After reading her poems and prose, left with the gift of her vision, what had simply been home and common place is now touched again with the kind of magic we felt when we first moved here 20 years ago.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Celebrating Great Poetry, July 21, 2003

By 

Craig Alan Loewen "Craig Alan Loewen" (Pennsylvania, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: White Pine: Poems and Prose Poems (Paperback)

I do not like modern poetry as I find most of it to be either pathetic whining that the world will not devote itself to making the writer happy or meaningless babble where the writer thinks themselves clever for being undecipherable.

When I came across Mary Oliver's White Pine, I picked it up with some reluctance. I put it down with complete satisfaction.

Erudite, yet approachable. Deep, but not obtuse. Pointed observations are made, but without preachy self-centeredness. Modern poets can learn a lot from Mary Oliver.

Her descriptions and mastery of language are nothing short of pure magic, but I want to do more than reference Oliver's power of observation and description. Treating the reader with respect (and how rare that is in today's poetry), she lets us walk with her through the wooded hills, lush meadows, and seashores of her native Massachusetts, pointing out the common in new ways, making it all wondrous as if being seen for the first time. She has a philosophy of life that she shares gently, without feeling a need to beat it into the reader with all the subtlety of a crowbar.

I count myself fortunate to encounter Mary Oliver's work and I look forward to reading more of it. White Pine was a great place to start and it would be a great place for you to start too.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nature Walk, March 21, 2008

By 

Una (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: White Pine: Poems and Prose Poems (Paperback)

The outlay of this book gives the feel of one long, lingering poem. The first poem, on a day of writing while nature cycles itself outside Oliver's window, serves as preface into a series of walks, gaining insight from birds and deer, sea-animals, and a single snake, a copperhead proem. The final poems are darker, wiser--of learning death then writing death, and the sweetness of love in all its forms.

Oliver's form is lax, inventive, gentle, which I enjoy. I was eagerly reminded of Yeats, though instead of fairies, elves, and nether-worlds, there is the grandeur of forest animals, the mystery of the mammal, the avian, the sea-dweller, the skeleton. I felt Oliver's role as observer in the forest became too detached from the human-doings and I couldn't grasp her trails as thoroughly as I might have wished. But in this she gains a surreal other-world which, unlike with Yeats' nether-worlds, we can see with our eyes, following on the tip of her pen. I love her poems. I bit in and held on dog-toothed until I was done.