Download PDF Upstream Selected Essays Mary Oliver 9780143130086 Books
Download As PDF : Upstream Selected Essays Mary Oliver 9780143130086 Books
One of O, The Oprah Magazine’s Ten Best Books of the Year!
The New York Times bestselling collection of essays from beloved poet, Mary Oliver.
“In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.”
So begins Upstream, a collection of essays in which revered poet Mary Oliver reflects on her willingness, as a young child and as an adult, to lose herself within the beauty and mysteries of both the natural world and the world of literature. Emphasizing the significance of her childhood “friend” Walt Whitman, through whose work she first understood that a poem is a temple, “a place to enter, and in which to feel,” and who encouraged her to vanish into the world of her writing, Oliver meditates on the forces that allowed her to create a life for herself out of work and love. As she writes, “I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.”
Upstream follows Oliver as she contemplates the pleasure of artistic labor, her boundless curiosity for the flora and fauna that surround her, and the responsibility she has inherited from Shelley, Wordsworth, Emerson, Poe, and Frost, the great thinkers and writers of the past, to live thoughtfully, intelligently, and to observe with passion. Throughout this collection, Oliver positions not just herself upstream but us as well as she encourages us all to keep moving, to lose ourselves in the awe of the unknown, and to give power and time to the creative and whimsical urges that live within us.
Download PDF Upstream Selected Essays Mary Oliver 9780143130086 Books
"Would give it 10 stars if I could. Mary Oliver is a revelation and anything she writes is worth reading, studying and thinking about. I've been reading her poetry for years, and she is lined up with the greats, the everlasting, the Whitmans, Dickinsons, Thoreaus, she leap frogs over categories,
transcends literary compartments, a pragmatic romantic or romantic pragmatist? No labels fit, she is Mary Oliver - how fortunate we are that she was born into our time so that we could follow her path and thereby find our own with so much less trouble."
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Upstream Selected Essays Mary Oliver 9780143130086 Books Reviews :
Upstream Selected Essays Mary Oliver 9780143130086 Books Reviews
- We first read Mary Oliver when we visited USA. Her poetry is naturalistic and real, and it appeals to our Icelandic sensibilities . This collection is wonderful. I have read it in its entirety, and her prose is as luminous as always. I have enjoyed reading her essays, including the one on Whitman. She is in a class of her own, and she marches to her own, natural rhythm . In this world, we need her more than ever. She reminds us why nature is so close to our souls.
- Would give it 10 stars if I could. Mary Oliver is a revelation and anything she writes is worth reading, studying and thinking about. I've been reading her poetry for years, and she is lined up with the greats, the everlasting, the Whitmans, Dickinsons, Thoreaus, she leap frogs over categories,
transcends literary compartments, a pragmatic romantic or romantic pragmatist? No labels fit, she is Mary Oliver - how fortunate we are that she was born into our time so that we could follow her path and thereby find our own with so much less trouble. - Insightful and elegant. Poetry in prose. Oliver's observations of the natural world are breathtaking and sometimes heartbreaking. A book that is also a meditation. Profound is the word that comes to mind, written with no pretension. Honest and beautiful. Highly recommend.
- From her reflections on walks in the woods to incredible illuminations of her favorite authors, Oliver's collected essays of Upstream offer a writing for everyone.
"The best use of literature bends not toward the narrow and the absolute," she says, "But to the extravagant and the possible. Answers are no part of it; rather, it is the opinions, the rhapsodic persuasions, the engrafted logics, the clues that are to the mind of the reader the possible keys to his own self-quarrels, his own predicament" (69). A poetic description of reading if ever I've read one. She continues in the same paragraph, of Emerson "The one thing he is adamant about is that we should look [at things for ourselves]--we must look--for that is the liquor of life, that brooding upon issues, that attention to thought even as we weed the garden or milk the cow" (69).
Observations like the one above abound in Oliver's work, and I would put her nature reflections on par with Emerson or Thoreau, though not as earth-shattering (pun intended) as their writings were for their time. As she says in her writing "Let me be who I am, and then some," she certainly offers who she is, and then some. I, as her reader, am thankful for the experience.
Extra note She once built a small house in her back yard for $3.58 using scrap lumber and found materials. I find this incredibly inspiring. - Mary Oliver. One of my all time favorite poets had me doubting her in her newest book "Upstream." Until...Section Three - then WHAM! wake up Jenny Bates! you doubting Thomas! It was like I was sleepwalking through Sections One & Two. Of course, Section Three begins with essays about Emerson, Poe, Whitman - take notice! These essays are brilliant and it doesn't stop there. Section Four is as poignant and elegant as any poem by Oliver. So I add this small segment from Section Four to 'things I wish I had written'...my humility back in its place for the time being.
"Dear Bear, it's no use, the world is like that. So stay where you are, and live long. Someday maybe we'll wise up and remember what you were hopeless ambassador of a world that returns now only in poet's dreams." - I wish I had been able to be in a classroom that Mary Oliver taught in. To sit at the feet of a master of words as she is and just soak in her brilliance.
I feel like in reading Upstream, I received maybe just a small taste of what it must be like to be taught by her in person.
I call this book Poetic Essays. My own phrase, and a little presumptuous of me to dare to put a name of my own to her work, forgive me, it's just what the essays felt like to me, Mary Oliver poetry in essay form.
My favorites of course were the essays that took place in nature. The Barn Owl, the Snapping Turtle, the Fox, the Spider and Bird. Tramping through the woods with Mary and seeing everything she saw through her beautiful words was such a special experience.
But then she turned to literature and the writers who had touched her life, Emerson and Wordsworth to name a few and for me those essays were an education and I enjoyed every word.
This book was such a special treat. I laughed and I felt every feeling and of course I cried because Mary's beautiful words just make me so happy. I am feeling so honored and privileged to have had the opportunity to sit at the feet of Mary Oliver, even if she wasn't in the room, and take in every moment of her genius and be a better human being because of it.
I voluntarily read an Advanced Reader Copy of this book. - I don't know any one who writes as beautifully as Mary Oliver, and I just want to say thank you.
- Excellent - more of Mary Oliver.
