Thirst: Poems - Dark Publications

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
Now in paperback: the national bestseller from the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet

"To read Thirst, Mary Oliver's most recent book of poems, is to feel gratitude for the simple fact of being alive." ?Angela O'Donnell, America Magazine

Thirst, a collection of forty-three new poems from Pulitzer Prize–winner Mary Oliver, introduces two new directions in the poet's work. Grappling with grief at the death of her beloved partner of over forty years, she strives to experience sorrow as a path to spiritual progress, grief as part of loving and not its end. And within these pages she chronicles for the first time her discovery of faith, without abandoning the love of the physical world that has been a hallmark of her work for four decades.

"Mary Oliver moves by instinct, faith, and determination. She is among our finest poets, and still growing."
?Alicia Ostriker, The Nation

"It has always seemed, across her [many] books of poetry, . . . that Mary Oliver might leave us at any minute. Even a 1984 Pulitzer Prize couldn't pin her to the ground. She'd change quietly into a heron or a bear and fly or walk on forever."
?Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

"'My work is loving the world,' Oliver tells us?.She has always done that work?in poems of considerable beauty. Now she rises, not above the world, but through it."
?Jay Parini, The Guardian, 10/6/2007

"Mary Oliver is, to my mind, one of the most gifted American poets working in English today. In her hands, the language acquires a lucidity approaching translucence; the accuracy of her vision and the precision of her voice are unique in their refreshing simplicity. Perhaps most singular is the tendency of her poems to be at once powerful and appealing; an affection for the natural world and a sympathy toward the reader abide."
?Katherine Hollander, Pleiades, Fall 2007

"To read Thirst is to feel gratitude for the simple fact of being alive. This is not surprising, as it is the effect [Oliver's] best work has produced in readers for the past 43 years."
?Angela O'Donnell, America magazine

"'My work is loving the world.' That first line of 'Messenger,' the first poem in Mary Oliver's new collection Thirst (Beacon Press), names what she does better than any other poet writing today. Just as Joan Didion's memoir The Year of Magical Thinking, which had a similar 'occasion,' was arguably her best work ever, so is Thirst Oliver's."
?Tim Pfaff, Bay Area Reporter, 1/11/07

Customer Reviews: Read 27 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Faith-Full Poems October 31, 2006
58 out of 63 found this review helpful

In the very first line of the very first poem of Mary Oliver's new collection of poetry, entitled Thirst, she says "My work is loving the world" (Messenger). In the very last poem of this slim volume, she says "Love for the earth and love for you are having such a long conversation in my heart" (Thirst). These poems bookend a new affirmation of faith for Oliver: For the first time in her life, at the age of 71, she is writing from an apparent Christian framework, loving the world of marshes, ponds, beaches, bears and dogs and the Creator of all these things she has so long loved.

These are poems that celebrate the world of Creation, that praise the Creator, that walk through grief (Oliver lost her long time partner and agent, Molly Malone Cook, in 1995) into resolute hope, that point beyond nature and grief to the Giver of all. Her love of nature might be seen in the way she addresses it as addressing a good friend, as in "When I Am Among the Trees," where she says

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

There are poems about ribbon snakes, roses, a great moth, otters, Percy (her dog), and that great conversation ("And still I believe you will/ come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox,/ the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea goose, know/ that really I am speaking to you" (Making the House Ready for the Lord).

And then there is grief. I loved this one (Percy (Four)), so simple, so true, about doing what need be done as we wait for grief to pass and life to go on, moving faithfully yet mutely through each day:

I went to church.
I walked on the beach
and played with Percy.

I answered the phone
and paid the bills.
I did the laundry.

I spoke her name
a hundred times.

I knelt in the dark
and said some holy words.

I went downstairs,
I watered the flowers,
I fed Percy.

That's it. No emotion here. She just did what needed to be done, including praying, though she was in that state where you seem to have lost all feeling.

In the end though, after the poems of creation and poems of grief, what stand out are the affirmations of faith. In "Coming to God: First Days," she says "Lord, I would run for you, loving the miles for your sake./ I would climb the highest tree/ to be that much closer." In "Six Recognitions of the Lord," she celebrates "everywhere the luminous sprawl of gifts,/ the hospitality of the Lord and my/ inadequate answers as I row my beautiful, temporary body/ through this water-lily world." And, at last, in "Thirst," she writes "Another morning and I wake with thirst/ for the goodness I do not have. I walk/ out to the pond and all the way God has/ given us such beautiful lessons."

Mary Oliver thirsts for God. Some will disagree with her lifestyle (Molly Malone Cook was truly her life partner), but her faith seems real as is her love of the world and her experience of grief. Those are things that must resonate with us, as we are human too.

Most helpful is the accessibility of these poems. Many people will be able to read and enjoy them. The language is simple yet elegant. The "space" in the poems created by their economy is an almost aural testimony to the awe with which she regards the life of the world and, now, the One who made it all.

I highly recommend this book of poetry. It's like walkiong through a room of Monet paintings: there's not much not to love. Use it to stimulate your own love of nature and of nature's God.

5 out of 5 stars

5 Stars Squared... or exponentially beyond.... January 7, 2007
26 out of 26 found this review helpful

I thought to myself, "It must be about time for
Mary Oliver to have released another poetry
collection." and was so pleased to find
_Thirst_ on the shelf.

The moment I opened it I realized this was
going to be even more compelling than
nearly any other poetry I have ever read.

I sat in Barnes and Noble, crying openly,
laughing, smiling and revisiting poems
and phrases and just being amazed at the
transcendence I felt from Ms. Oliver's words.

This is a poetry book I will give to my
"non poetry" friends as well as my poetry
friends.

It is about the sacredness of life itself, it
is about love - never ending. It is about
coming to understand wholeness.

And so much more. It is difficult to express
with words how impactful this book is upon
my soul. As one reviewer said below, five stars
are not enough.

2 out of 5 stars

Disappointingly Party Line December 31, 2007
9 out of 15 found this review helpful

Mary Oliver is one of my favorite poets. It was disappointing to read this collection of trite Christian verse. Whereas her past poems suggested an almost pagan, pantheistic spiritual fervor for nature, these poems drip with the cliches of Christendom: god, the "Lord," and JC himself. I found myself yearning for the broader, more universal spirituality of Oliver's older poems. I am less interested in this recent work than in her previous work.

5 out of 5 stars

How Grief Edges Joy January 7, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful

Live long enough, live deep enough, and you will find, as Mary Oliver does in these 43 poems collected in "Thirst," that all grief edges joy, all joy is edged by grief. It is only in a deep and courageous immersion into life, and perhaps also that place beyond life, that one can fully experience this wonder, a kind of yin and yang, the light beside the shadow, phenomenon that is living with thirst, quenched or unquenched.

There is nothing pretentious about Oliver's poetry. She is simplicity and purity itself. Thirst is how she approaches living, and now dying - in her expression of grief for the loss of her longtime life partner. This does not change how she approaches living, only intensifies it. "My work is loving the world," she writes in her opening poem, "Messenger." She observes the world, then observes herself in it, part and parcel. "Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums./Here the clam deep in the speckled sand./Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?/Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me/keep my mind on what matters,/which is my work,/which is mostly standing still and learning to be/astonished."

Much of this collection is Oliver's conversation with God having a conversation with her. Their dialogue is filtered by nature, where everyplace is a place of worship and every living thing ministering to her and she reciprocating. Her dogs speak of unconditional love and simple acceptance, an exchanged gaze with a snake is looking into the eyes of divinity (and not the darker side). Praying can be done through the weeds in a vacant lot. The words do not have to be elaborate, Oliver writes, "but a doorway/into thanks, and a silence in which/another voice may speak." This same sentiment is echoed with utmost simplicity in the poem, "The Uses of Sorrow" - that a box full of darkness given to her by another can also be a gift, a richer blessing.

When you think you cannot go closer, or dive deeper, or come up into brighter light, as Oliver writes in her poetry - you can. Just when you think Oliver cannot elicit more beauty out of the everyday word - she does. We thirst for more.

5 out of 5 stars

transcendently ordinary March 9, 2007
7 out of 8 found this review helpful

mary oliver is a rare balm for the heart. while my mind appreciates her simply profound use of language, a deeper transmission seems to be occuring. her work is subtle in its invitation to taste of her experience. in her love of nature i find rest.

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