Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays

by Mary Oliver

Overview

A perfect introduction to Mary Oliver’s poetry, this stunning collection features 26 nature poems and prose writings about the birds that played such an important role in the Pulitzer Prize winner’s life.
 
Within these pages you will find hawks, hummingbirds, and herons; kingfishers, catbirds, and crows; swans, swallows and, of course, the snowy owl, among a dozen others-including ten poems that have never before been collected. She adds two beautifully crafted essays, “Owls,” selected for the Best American Essays series, and “Bird,” a new essay that will surely take its place among the classics of the genre.

In the words of the poet Stanley Kunitz, “Mary Oliver's poetry is fine and deep; it reads like a blessing. Her special gift is to connect us with our sources in the natural world, its beauties and terrors and mysteries and consolations.”

For anyone who values poetry and essays, for anyone who cares about birds, Owls and Other Fantasies will be a treasured gift; for those who love both, it will be essential reading.

This book was published with two different covers. Customers will be shipped the book with one of the available covers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807096826
Publisher:	Beacon Press
Publication date:	09/30/2003
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	88
Sales rank:	567,320
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Mary Oliver (1935–2019), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, is one of the most celebrated and best-selling poets in America. She wrote over 30 volumes of poetry and prose, including Blue Iris, Owls and Other Fantasies, Why I Wake Early, two volumes of New and Selected Poems, and Devotions, as well as two essay collections, Long Life and Upstream.

Editorial Reviews

Alternating poems, short essays and drawings of feathers, Oliver's 12th collection is strongest and most direct when using the first person to show the second a path to the good life: "You do not have to be good./ You do not have to walk on your knees/ for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting/ You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves." Many of the poems take up moments of attention to, and are titled for, birds: goldfinches "having a melodious argument"; hummingbirds as "tiny fireworks"; herons "in the black, polished water"; starlings "Chunky and noisy/ but with stars in their black feathers"; and the local crow, of whom she says "I have never seen anything brighter." Oliver won a Pulitzer Prize for American Primitive (1984) and a National Book Award for New and Selected Poems (1992). If this book lacks some of the urgency of earlier work, it has been replaced by a confidence that seems less about writing highly crafted poems than about rendering the moment, whether of observation or imagination, simply and easily, whether in prose or verse. As an essay on a "black-backed gull" Oliver rescued puts it, "no matter how hard I try to tell this story, it's not like it was," but the best of these 28 pieces seem to get close. (Sept.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Oliver has gained enormous popularity in recent years for the accessible yet highly articulate and profound treatment she gives each poem. In this collection, she focuses her wakeful attention on wildlife, primarily birds. Thus, bird enthusiasts will enjoy this book, even if they don't customarily read poetry. The poems in this slim volume are interwoven with short prose pieces; those about looking for a horned owl's nest and an achingly touching story about a rescued seagull are among the most memorable. The theme of aging runs throughout the work-life as a panorama, a landscape, through which the poet moves toward its end, observing as she goes the disparate natures of most humans and animals. Speaking of a catbird, Oliver writes: "For he will never sing for the kingdom of dollars./ For he will never grow pockets in his gray wings." Describing hummingbirds: "in their pale-green dresses;/ then they rose, tiny fireworks,/ into the leaves." An unmistakable Buddhist influence shows itself in poems such as "Yes! No!" with its final line, "To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work." This new title will bring much pleasure to the many readers who claim Oliver as their favorite poet, as well as to people new to her work. Very highly recommended.-Judy Clarence, California State Univ. Lib., Hayward Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Mary Oliver is beautiful and accurate in this book of poetry and prose about birds . . . all rendered with the precision of a line-drawing of a single feather that puts the entire wing into perspective.”
—Orion

“What we have here are moral essays in prose and verse, passionate meditations on the conduct of life. You will be the wiser—as I believe I am—for having read them.”
—Frank Wilson, Philadelphia Inquirer

“These poems and essays dazzle us and then send us into deep reflection about the marvels and mysteries of life that come to us in the sightings, songs, and soaring of birds.”
—Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Health

“Owls and Other Fantasies will bring much pleasure to the many readers who claim Oliver as their favorite poet, as well as to people new to her work.”
—Judy Clarence, Booklist

“[Owls and Other Fantasies] will bring much pleasure to the many readers who claim Oliver as their favorite poet, as well as to people new to her work.:
—Library Journal

From the Publisher