What Do We Know: Poems and Prose Poems

by Mary Oliver

Overview

Forty poems by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver

"Mary Oliver's poetry is fine and deep; it reads like a blessing," wrote Stanley Kunitz. For the many admirers of Mary Oliver's dazzling poetry and luminous vision, as well as for those who may be coming to her work for the first time, What Do We Know will be a revelation. 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."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306812064
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	03/27/2003
Pages:	88
Sales rank:	1,067,715
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.38(d)

About the Author

Born in a small town in Ohio, Mary Oliver published her first book of poetry in 1963 at the age of 28. Over the course of her long career, she received numerous awards. Her fourth book, American Primitive, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984. She led workshops and held residencies at various colleges and universities, including Bennington College, where she held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching. She was the author of more than twenty books, including The Leaf and the Cloud and Long Life. Her many accolades include the National Book Award. She died in 2019.

Table of Contents

	Summer Poem	1
	One Hundred White-sided Dolphins on a Summer Day	2
	The Word	4
	Mockingbird	5
	The Return	7
	Black Snake	11
	Beauty	12
	The Hummingbird	14
	Stones	15
	Raven with Crows	16
	At Blackwater Pond	18
	Wind	19
	The Roses	20
	You Are Standing at the Edge of the Woods	21
	Sometimes I Am Victorious and Even Beautiful	23
	Lion's Mane	24
	Clam	26
	Heron Rises from the Dark, Summer Pond	27
	On the Flats	29
	On Losing a House	30
	Crows	34
	Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me	36
	The Lark	38
	Gratitude	40
	Oranges	42
	Moonlight	43
	Now Are the Rough Things Smooth	44
	A Settlement	45
	Their Wings	46
	Her Grave, Again	48
	Blue Iris	53
	Walking to Oak-Head Pond, and Thinking of the Ponds I Will Visit in the Next Days and Weeks	54
	Early Snow	56
	At Twilight an Angel	58
	Snow Buntings	60
	Winter at Herring Cove	61
	Tree Sparrows	63
	The Loon	64
	Snowy Night	65
	Mink	67
	Acknowledgments	71

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Mary Oliver

"A master of spare and evocative imagery."—Poetry

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

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

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

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

"Oliver might be accused of an untransformed and reactionary romanticism. One would think that poems about self, nature, death, and ecstasy had run their course in English. Think again."—Chicago Tribune

"Who wouldn't want to be part of Mary Oliver's world?"—Appalachian Review

From the Publisher