A Thousand Mornings: Poems Paperback – September 24, 2013

It was a rare read where someone can roam the mind so fully. She knows birds...she makes them interesting bringing them to life.

When I arrived home from the community Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday I noticed that I had not brought in my mail from Wednesday. I was feeling a little low, mostly from being tired and a bit from missing my family. When I opened the front door to retrieve my mail, I almost missed a slim cardboard box propped up against the house. A package from Amazon.com. Oh joy of joys! I had almost forgot that I had placed an order for Mary Oliver’s twenty-second book of poems, A Thousand Mornings. You cannot imagine my smile as I tore the box open and saw its cover.One can never feel low or lonely when there is a book of Mary Oliver poems in one’s hands.I knew I had plenty of work to finish that evening, but first things first. I opened a Flying Bison Blizzard Bock, ran a hot bath and settled in for a soak, sip and read.It is an event in my life, when a new Mary Oliver book is published. In the past so many years I have celebrated the arrivals of Evidence, Thirst, Swan, and Red Bird. I have purchased at least five copies of her New and Selected Poems because I can’t help but give them away when I meet someone who has never heard of her before. And each time I receive a new title it is my constant companion for weeks upon weeks. If you find it strange that a book of poems can be a companion, then you have not met a Mary Oliver poem yet.A Thousand Mornings is a slender volume, seventy-six pages, and yet how many hours of pleasure, contemplation and company it contains. When I read Oliver’s poems I am always transported to my own experiences. The places she unfolds in her work are so similar to my favourite places at the farm, the creatures I encounter, the plants and trees and insects, that I am immersed in that world but with an even closer view. Because this is what Mary does, illuminates the most intricate details of what she notices, and somehow brings a universal light to the profound human experience as well. Amazement. Awe. Wonder. Gratitude. Reverence. For all that lives, and also dies.I have noticed over the past several books she has published that more and more she is slipping more personal, more intimate details of her own life within the words. Mary is notoriously private, rarely gives interviews, and has often spoke of how she keeps her private and personal life out of her work, at least in a confessional way. But in A Thousand Mornings there are several poems that are intimate to her life, much more so than in any of her other works. And yet there is still nothing confessional about them, only an expansive wisdom that never says, “this is the answer,” but instead leaves only questions in the reader’s mind. Questions and a sense of amazement for the world, and tremendous comfort. Mary Oliver is a poet who honours mystery. I find immeasurable comfort in that.Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

Beautiful writing

This book of poetry by Mary Oliver is simple in its language but there is nothing trivial about the diction; the words are well chosen. Don't look for rhyme here or formal structure. But this does not diminish the book that has poems that are a pleasure to read and do show how well-written they are.For poetry that is not difficult or obscure but gives you something to think about, this book of poems hits on the head. Difficulty does not make the poem; it is the way one writes that really matters, and this book proves it.

Poetry was a drug of my teen years. I haven’t read a book of poetry in decades. Not a book which is a collection of poems. I read poetry that I had to teach. It was hopping in rocks - I had to find one wide enough, flat enough, for me to be able to stand on it, and understand and react. My mind is generally a butter fly, a cricket, fluttering or leaping from thought to thought, rarely pausing or reflecting. I will find another stream, with some easy rocks. I will try again.

Such beautiful words, beyond the merely spiritual or nature poetry. What a treasure Mary Oliver was. And such a pleasant fall morning to finish this collection.

When I read Mary Oliver’s poetry, it frees my mind to think of better, more noble things and tamps down my anxious thoughts. She was a true gift to this world, her poetry, transforming.

Nice small book. Wonderful heartfelt poetry about everyday magic and the natural world everyone experiences