What Do We Know: Poems

by Mary Oliver

Book Overview

For the many admirers of Mary Oliver's dazzling poetry and luminous vision, as well as for those who may only now be discovering her work, What Do We Know will be a revelation and, in the words of Stanley Kunitz, "a blessing." 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."What was most wonderful?The sea, and its wide shoulders;the sea and its triangles;the sea lying back on its long athlete's spine.What did you think was happening?The green breast of the hummingbird;the eye of the pond;the wet face of the lily;the bright, puckered knee of the broken oak;the red tulip of the fox's mouth;the up-swing, the down-pour, the frayed sleeve of the first snow--so the gods shake us from our sleep.--from "Gratitude"

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 030680994X
• ISBN13: 9780306809941
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 88 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 7.2" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

What Do We Know: Poems and Prose Poems

Best read out loud. Poems about nature and life.

"So the gods shake us from our sleep."

With her characteristic sense of wonder, Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Mary Oliver, returns to the natural world in this new collection of forty poems. "Walking out into all of this with nowhere to go," she writes, "and no task undertaken but to turn the pages of this beautiful world over and over, in the world of my mind" ("A Settlement," p. 45). Whether she's observing a hundred dolphins on a summer day, a mockingbird, a black snake on a flat rock, an owl with eyes "like burning moons" (p. 12), the "single-mindedness" of a hummingbird (p. 14), stones, a "beautifully acrobatic" raven (p. 16), a trapped turtle, clams ("each one is a small life, but sometimes long, if its place in the universe is not found out," p. 26), a heron, bumble bees that "have memorized/ every stalk and leaf/ of the field" (p. 30), crows "as cheerful as saints, or thieves of the small job" (p. 34), a lark, "the wet face of the lily" (p. 41), oranges, moonlight, a dead bat ("in death/ it was a mad architecture--/ its joints were too many; it shed/ all sound, all power--became/ a little heap of stiffness/ with a monkey face" (p. 46), a blue iris, or "the silence; the blank, white, glittering sublime" of an early snow (p. 57), Oliver pays attention to life deeply. Her poetry is earthy yet spiritual, simple yet profound, and life-affirming without exception. In my favorite poem in the collection, "The Loon," I, too, experienced the "rapture of being alive" upon hearing "the small,/ perfect voice" that caused Oliver to pause from her reading at four a.m. (p. 64).Reading Mary Oliver always reminds me of why I enjoy poetry. She has the ability to reveal heaven in a wildflower, and the wonders of God in every creature. In addition to this book of poetry, I also highly recommend Oliver's NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (1993) and THE LEAF AND THE CLOUD (2000).G. Merritt

Preparing for eternity

I was worried about what this book of poems would be like--like so many of us, I am madly in love with this poet, and want her to go on forever. The urgency in the love song to the world that The Leaf and the Cloud was has been replaced with a coolness and a lightness that is exquisitely beautiful once you get over the fact that so much of this is about death. The supernatural is the theme of this book, with god with a capital G and angels and ghosts. I have never read her more vulnerable or as far away from us. But this is a beautiful book, a fantastic transition from her last works, showing what a truly great American poet she is.