Red Bird by Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver is one of America's best-loved poets. Her luminous poetry celebrates nature and beauty, love and the spirit, silence and wonder, extending the visionary American tradition of Whitman, Emerson, Frost and Emily Dickinson. The winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, she has lived for many years on Cape Cod. Her extraordinary poetry is nourished by her intimate knowledge and minute daily observation of the New England coast, its woods and ponds, its birds and animals, plants and trees. 'Red bird came all winter firing up the landscape as nothing else could'.So begins her latest collection, and the image of that fiery bird stays with the reader, appearing in unexpected forms and guises until, in a postscript, he explains himself: '...for truly the body needs a song, a spirit, a soul. And no less, to make this work, the soul has need of a body, and I am both of the earth and I am of the inexplicable beauty of heaven where I fly so easily, so welcome, yes, and this is why I have been sent, to teach this to your heart. Red Bird is Mary Oliver's most wide-ranging collection to date, and includes her first-ever cycle of love poems. As in all her books, there are poems on the natural world and her gratitude for its gifts, as well as tributes to the many people she has loved in her seventy years, and poems for her disobedient dog, Percy. But here her attention turns also with ferocity to the degradation of the Earth and the denigration of the downtrodden by the powerful.
Mary Oliver moves by instinct, faith, and determinationShe is among out finest poets, and still growing. -- Alicia Ostriker * The Nation *
These are life-enhancing and redemptive poems that coax the sublime from the subliminal. -- Sally Connolly * Poetry *
These are life-enhancing and redemptive poems that coax the sublime from the subliminal. -- Sally Connolly * Poetry *
Mary Oliver (1935-2019) was born in Maple Heights, Ohio. She attended both Ohio State University and Vassar College, without receiving a degree. Her first collection of poems, No Voyage, and Other Poems, was published in 1963. She went on to publish more than fifteen collections of poetry, including five published by in the UK by Bloodaxe: Wild Geese: Selected Poems (2004), Thirst (2007), Red Bird (2008), Evidence (2009) and Swan (2011). Her New and Selected Poems (1992) won the National Book Award; House of Light (1990) won the Christopher Award and the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award; and she won a Pulitzer Prize for American Primitive (1983). She held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College until 2001, and lived for over forty years in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with her partner Molly Malone Cook, a photographer and gallery owner who acted as her literary agent. Following Cook's death in 2005, she lived mostly in Florida, where she died from cancer at the age of 83.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781852248116 |
| ISBN 10 | 1852248114 |
| Title | Red Bird |
| Author | Mary Oliver |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Bloodaxe Books Ltd |
| Year published | 2008-10-23 |
| Number of pages | 96 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |