Devotions: A Read with Jenna Pick: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

Beautiful collection of Mary Oliver’s work - great for reflections and an introduction overview.

I mean, it's Mary Oliver. There is not much more to be said :)

Poesia pura, in lingua originale.

I am not a big reader of poetry - I can appreciate the beauty of verse and the play on words, but complex and abstract poems overwhelm me and my senses, and I don’t particularly enjoy the almost athletic mental agility demanded at times. Oliver’s poems chased away my fears and changed my perspective. I felt drawn to them because they are so honest and deceptively simple. They are like a balm for the parched soul, so calming and quiet, that reading them feels like a refreshing dip in cool waters. This volume offers an overview of Oliver’s illustrious career documenting the sanctity of the banal and the everyday, the unnoticed and the natural. The simple beauty of nature’s song is captured in Oliver’s clean, resonant verse. Some enduring themes run through her poems, celebrating the “wild and precious life”, the mystery of prayer, and how it goes beyond words, and yet is found in the reverential communion with and contemplation of creation. And it is with respect to the species just as it is to the individual. It may be the grasshopper ‘who is eating sugar out of [her] hand’ and ‘snaps her wings open and floats away’ (“The Summer Day”) or the deer who stumbled against her “so busy with her own happiness” and Oliver’s recognition of ‘the flower of her amazement and the stalled breath of her curiosity, and even the damp touch of her solicitude before she took flight’ (“Picking Blueberries, Austerlitz, New York, 1957”). Oliver celebrates beauty and its separateness from the performance of nature for Her own benefit. In the poems, she embraces impermanence and transience of each passing moment, and yet appreciates the eternal in that moment, where she fully partakes of life in the present. There is so much to appreciate and to contemplate in this collection that words would never suffice. I am convinced new and fresh wisdom would unveil itself with each revisit. It took me more than a whole year to spend time with this mammoth collection without rushing through it. Any attempt to would have been counter to the words that bid me to slow down and take my time. More than 5 solid gold stars.

Helt fantastisk!!!!

Die Gedichte von Mary Oliver in diesem Band sind wunderschön, sehr naturverbunden und berühren das Herz auf eine sanfte Weise. Ich lese die Gedichte gern morgens, da sie entspannen, anregen und inspirieren. Als Nicht-Englische Muttersprachlerin, die sehr gern auf Englisch liest, musste ich doch viele Worte nachschlagen, da sie mir völlig unbekannt waren - insb. Tier- und Pflanzenarten. Dafür konnte ich nicht nur die Dichtkunst genießen, sondern auch jeden Morgen etwas Neues lernen. Wer gerne Wunder im Kleinen entdeckt, könnte sich für dieses Band begeistern!