Upstream: Selected Essays Paperback - 2019

Name: Upstream: Selected Essays
Price: 10.50 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Oliver, Mary
ISBN: 9780143130086

by Mary Oliver

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This seller has earned a 4.16 of 5 Stars rating from internet customers.

4.16 / 5 (24482 total reviews)

A collection of essays from the beloved Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author encourages readers to keep moving, to lose themselves in the awe of the unknown, and to give power and time to the creative and whimsical urges that live within.

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Reader reviews for Upstream: Selected Essays

Review summary

This seller has earned a 4.16 of 5 Stars rating from internet customers.

4.16 / 5 (24482 total reviews)

Readers largely praise this slim essay collection for its lyrical, meditative prose and reverent attention to the natural world. Many found it soothing, inspiring, and easily read in short sips or a single sitting, with standout pieces on Whitman, Emerson, and Poe, and thoughtful reflections on creativity, solitude, and paying attention. Critiques focus on unevenness and a disjointed, poem-like approach that can feel light on argument or analysis, leaving some essays with a "so what" aftertaste. A few were put off by intimate nature imagery. Overall, it’s seen as an elegant but uneven volume, best for admirers of Oliver and nature writing.

Readers say this book is:

lyricalmeditativenature-centricinsightfulsoothinginspiringunevenmeanderingquick readpoetic prose

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From the publisher

One of O, The Oprah Magazine's Ten Best Books of the Year

The New York Times bestselling collection of essays from beloved poet, Mary Oliver.

"There's hardly a page in my copy of Upstream that isn't folded down or underlined and scribbled on, so charged is Oliver's language . . ." --Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air

"Uniting essays from Oliver's previous books and elsewhere, this gem of a collection offers a compelling synthesis of the poet's thoughts on the natural, spiritual and artistic worlds . . ." --The New York Times

"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."

So begins Upstream, a collection of essays in which revered poet Mary Oliver reflects on her willingness, as a young child and as an adult, to lose herself within the beauty and mysteries of both the natural world and the world of literature. Emphasizing the significance of her childhood "friend" Walt Whitman, through whose work she first understood that a poem is a temple, "a place to enter, and in which to feel," and who encouraged her to vanish into the world of her writing, Oliver meditates on the forces that allowed her to create a life for herself out of work and love. As she writes, "I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple."

Upstream follows Oliver as she contemplates the pleasure of artistic labor, her boundless curiosity for the flora and fauna that surround her, and the responsibility she has inherited from Shelley, Wordsworth, Emerson, Poe, and Frost, the great thinkers and writers of the past, to live thoughtfully, intelligently, and to observe with passion. Throughout this collection, Oliver positions not just herself upstream but us as well as she encourages us all to keep moving, to lose ourselves in the awe of the unknown, and to give power and time to the creative and whimsical urges that live within us.

Details

Title Upstream: Selected Essays
Author Mary Oliver
Binding Paperback
Pages 192
Volumes 1
Language ENG
Publisher Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date 2019-10-29
Features Bibliography
ISBN 9780143130086 / 0143130080
Weight 0.4 lbs (0.18 kg)
Dimensions 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.6 in (19.56 x 12.45 x 1.52 cm)
Category Literature - Classics / Criticism
Library of Congress subjects Whitman, Walt, Literature - History and criticism
Library of Congress Catalogue Number 2019457523
Dewey Decimal Code 814.54

About the author

Born in a small town in Ohio, Mary Oliver published her first book of poetry in 1963 at the age of 28. 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 Bennington College, where she held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching. She died in 2019.

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Upstream: Selected Essays

by Oliver, Mary

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Condition: New
Edition: First Edition
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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13: 9780143130086 / 0143130080
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Penguin Books, 2019-10-29. First Edition. paperback. Like New. 8vo - over 7ÃƒÆ’Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Â¾" - 9ÃƒÆ’Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Â¾" tall. Near Fine, new looking tight clean unmarked first print paperback, no creases no slant.