Felicity

Description

'And just like that, like a simple neighbourhood event, a miracle is taking place.' 'If I have any secret stash of poems, anywhere, it might be about love, not anger,' Mary Oliver once said in an interview. Finally, in Felicity, we can immerse ourselves in Oliver's love poems. Here, great happiness abounds. Our most delicate chronicler of physical landscape, Oliver has described her work as loving the world. With Felicity she examines what it means to love another person. She opens our eyes again to the territory within our own hearts; to the wild and to the quiet. In these poems, she describes - with joy - the strangeness and wonder of human connection.

Born in a small town in Ohio, Oliver published her first book of poetry in 1963 at the age of twenty-three. 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 Hennington College, where she held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching. Oliver died in January 2019.

Mary Oliver's poetry is fine and deep it reads like a blessing. Her special gift is to connect us with our sources in the natural world, its beauties and terrors and mysteries and consolations. - Stanley Kunitz The gift of Oliver's poetry is that she communicates the beauty she finds in the world and makes it unforgettable. - Miami Herald Oliver's poems are thoroughly convincing - as genuine, moving and implausible as the first caressing breeze of spring. - New York Times Book Review Mary Oliver teaches us the profound act of paying attention - a living wonder that makes it possible to appreciate all the others. - Boston Globe