West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

Mary Oliver

Apr 1998 · HarperCollins

About this ebook

A collection from the Pulitzer Prize–winner whose poems have been praised “as genuine, moving, and implausible as the first caressing breeze of spring” (The New York Times).

In this stunning collection of forty poems—nineteen previously unpublished—she writes of nature and love, of the way they transform over time. And the way they remain constant. And what did you think love would be like? A summer day? The brambles in their places, and the long stretches of mud? Flowers in every field, in every garden, with their soft beaks and their pastel shoulders? On one street after another, the litter ticks in the gutter. In one room after another, the lovers meet, quarrel, sicken, break apart, cry out. One or two leap from windows. Most simply lean, exhausted, their thin arms on the sill. They have done all they could. The golden eagle, that lives not far from here, has perhaps a thousand tiny feathers flowing from the back of its head, each one shaped like an infinitely small but perfect spear.

“From the chaos of the world, her poems distill what it means to be human and what is worthwhile about life.” —Library Journal

“Her poems do indeed make us ‘shiver with praise.’” —Booklist

About the author

Mary Oliver was born in Cleveland, Ohio on September 10, 1935. She attended Ohio State University and Vassar College, but did not receive a degree. Her first collection of poems, No Voyage and Other Poems, was published in 1963. She wrote more than 20 volumes of poetry including The River Styx, Ohio; The Leaf and the Cloud; Evidence; Blue Horses; and Felicity. She received several awards including the Pulitzer Prize for American Primitive, the Christopher Award and the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award for House of Light, and the National Book Award for New and Selected Poems. Her books of prose include A Poetry Handbook, Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse, and Long Life: Essays and Other Writings. She held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College from 1995 to 2001. She died on January 17, 2019 at the age of 83.