Selected Poems 1965-2005

Few modern poets are as beloved or as quoted as Mary Oliver. Spanning the major decades of her long career, this collection showcases Oliver’s remarkable lyrical powers and her reverential attention to the natural world. Her poetry sees life everywhere and asks what to do with it ­– how can we find our place among such beauty, such pain?

Populated by wading birds, early snowfalls, and swaying cornfields, her reflections are the record of a life spent walking alone in the wild. These timeless poems meet and touch their reader in any season of life, brightened by Oliver’s gift for amazement, shadowed by her constant awareness of harshness and death. Her words teach us to live with our eyes open wider.