Blue Iris: Poems and Essays


If you love her already, this collection is rewarding if a bit too flowery. Apr 26, Roger DeBlanck rated it it was amazing Shelves: With the poems and essays in Blue Iris , her primary focus is on the stunning beauty and wonder of the natural world. She expresses awestruck thrill at her ability to be in harmony with nature. She makes clear how if you can learn to appreciate the miracle of something as commonplace as the daily sunrise and sunset or the blooming of flowers in a field, your life will have great rewards.

Her uncanny power as a poet comes from her ability to recognize life as inherently sacred.

Beacon Press: Blue Iris

In questing for answers to the human condition, she finds hope and promise in showing reverence to the earth around her. Oliver is an inspiring poet and a visionary to cherish. Aug 12, Amy rated it really liked it. In addition to her vivid poems on nature's very soul, Oliver includes a few essays in some childhood experiences that first taught her to see and experience nature. She implores readers to send children forth with peppermint in their pockets, "give them woods and the possibility of the world salvaged from the lords of profit Attention is the beginning of devotion.

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Mar 12, Cynthia Egbert rated it liked it Shelves: Once again, Mary Oliver comes through for me. This is not my favourite of her collections but I still found much to appreciate. Below are my favourite offerings from this group of poems and essays. The Bleeding Heart I know a bleeding-heart plant that has thrived for sixty years if not more, and has never missed a spring without rising and spreading itself into a glossy bush, with many small red hearts dangling.

Don't you think that deserves a little thought? The woman who planted it has been gone for a Once again, Mary Oliver comes through for me. The woman who planted it has been gone for a long time, and everyone who saw it in that time has also died or moved away and so, like so many stories, this one can't get finished properly. Most things that are important, have you noticed, lack a certain neatness. More delicious, anyway, is to remember my grandmother's pleasure when the dissolve of winter was over and the green knobs appeared and began to rise, and to cre- ate their many hearts. One would say she was a simple woman, made happy by simple things.

I think this was true. And more than once, in my long life, I have wished to be her.

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The Roses All afternoon I have been walking over the dunes, hurrying from one thick raft of the wrinkled salt roses to another, leaning down close to their dark or pale petals, red as blood or white as snow. And now I am beginning to breathe slowly and evenly - the way a hunted animal breathes, finally when it has galloped and galloped - when it is wrung dry, but, at last, is far away, so the panic begins to drain from the chest, from the wonderful legs and the exhausted mind.

Oh sweetness pure and simple, may I join you? I lie down next to them, on the sand. But to tell about what happens next, truly I need help. Will somebody or something please start to sing?

How To Analyse A Poem

What we saw made us love and want to honor the world. And dear readers, if anyone thinks children in these difficult times do not need such peaceful intervals, then hang up the phone, we are not having a conversation. Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath? Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers, with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever?

Not that I had made any - Not that I could remember - But she was looking into the north Where nothing lives but white clouds Of crying birds, like bits of snow. Butterflies don't write books, neither do lilies or violets. Which doesn't mean they don't know, in their own way, what they are. That they don't know they are alive - that they don't feel, that action upon which all consciousness sits, lightly or heavily. Humility is the prize of the leaf-world. Vainglory is the bane of us, the humans. Apr 30, Konstantin rated it liked it Shelves: Although I did find the essays boring in that style of prose-poem that seems to want to dominate the New Essay form , I enjoyed the line "Writing is This, of course, is a very contemporary stance, alongside Roland Barthes and Stanley Fish.

Oliver's poetry is all about life and death and that in between stuff known as presence, as the Present. Her poems reflect nature and its ability to draw "suggestions" about itself and about ourselves. There was nothing absolutely brilliant, though her ideas combined with the power of vegetation grew on me and propagated that life is wild and vibrant. However, she ends oddly; saying that she'd would mind be a flower among similar flora. This seems to almost suggest that Mary Oliver wouldn't mind being mindlessly lovely and admired rather than having to deal with life's "foolish question[s]".

I do not agree, but I admire her claim on this. A good introduction to Mary Oliver, if not a bit prosaic. Nov 30, Peycho Kanev rated it liked it. Well, I think, I can read books.

Poems and Essays

I close the book. Well, I can write down words, like these, softly. Give me a little time, I say back to its staring, silver face. And my heart panics not to be, as I long to be, the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle. Aug 24, CaitlynK rated it really liked it. The poems are clear and beautiful, leading me into a summer's day, or a field encased by frost; but it's her essays that really grab me, and I think I'll be on the lookout for more of her non-fiction, in the future. Sep 06, Chip rated it it was amazing.

Blue Iris: Poems and Essays

Very lovely poems about nature and sort of the philosophy of nature. Interesting physical, visible structure of the poems as well.

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Jan 19, Holli rated it it was amazing. I have fallen in love with the poetry of Mary Oliver. In this collection, my favorites were Black Oaks and Blue Iris. Aug 16, Emma rated it it was amazing Shelves: Maybe my favorite of her books, at least so far. May 30, Alane rated it really liked it Shelves: Essays made for a change in the pacing of this collection. Dec 10, Denise rated it really liked it.

The way Oliver describes Nature--especially flowers in this one--wonderful. Beautiful collection of poetry!

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I was just minding my own business when I found myself on their straw hillsides, citron and butter-colored, and was happy, and why not? Published on December 20, Very beautiful good sized hardcover with photos of pressed flowers here and there scattered. Paperback , 73 pages. Get to Know Us.

Will read again and again. Jan 18, Chelsey Hillyer rated it really liked it. Oct 23, Miri rated it really liked it Shelves: Upstream In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be. Sea Leaves I walk beside the ocean, then turn and continue walking just beside the first berm, a few yards from the water which is at half tide.

Prime Book Box for Kids. Add all three to Cart Add all three to List. These items are shipped from and sold by different sellers. Buy the selected items together This item: Owls and Other Fantasies: Ships from and sold by Amazon. Why I Wake Early: Customers who bought this item also bought. Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1. New and Selected Poems, Volume One.

Poems and Prose Poems. Sponsored products related to this item What's this? The Poetry In Grief. A tale of two hearts traveling their paths of love, hurt, and hope. Modern love told through passion and poetry. Sad, funny, shocking poems about cats and the wonderfully odd, lonely people who love them. A Bar in Brooklyn. Looking in your eyes is like swimming through the unbound beauty of an eternity I wouldn't otherwise live to see.

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Blue Iris fortuitously offers an extended sequence and new contexts for a writer whose precise eye and instinct for surprising images have made her one of the. A rich collection of ten poems, two essays, and two dozen of Mary Oliver's classic works on flowers, trees, and plants of all sorts, elegantly illustrated, Blue Iris is.

A Book of Dead Poems. The best poetry of James Wylder: The Original Edition Illustrated. Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" rocked the literary world and forever changed the course of poetry. This is the complete first edition Reflections on Life with Ice Cream. Review Blue Iris fortuitously offers an extended sequence and new contexts for a writer whose precise eye and instinct for surprising images have made her one of the best practitioners of the lyrical revelation.

Beacon Press; 1 edition October 15, Language: Related Video Shorts 0 Upload your video. Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. A private person by nature, Mary Oliver has given very few interviews over the years. Instead, she prefers to let her work speak for itself. And speak it has, for the past five decades, to countless readers.

Blue Iris fortuitously offers an extended sequence and new contexts for a writer whose precise eye and instinct for surprising images have made her one of the best practitioners of the lyrical revelation. Oliver continues to earn applause and admiration for continuing to provide redemptive meditation and supple praises for nature in a time when so much is under threat.

Reading them is a sensual delight. Poems and Essays , this work presents poetry in free verse, which Oliver has perfected in all of its musicality and rhythm. Add to Cart Add to Cart. Also by Mary Oliver.