Owls and Other Fantasies by Mary Oliver

Owls and Other Fantasies by Mary Oliver

Pulitzer-prize-winning poet Mary Oliver collects 26 of her poems about the birds that have been such an important part of her life

Within these pages you will find hawks, hummingbirds, and herons; kingfishers, catbirds, and crows; swans, swallows and, of course, the snowy owl, among a dozen others-including 10 poems that have never before been collected. She adds 2 beautifully crafted essays, Owls, selected for the Best American Essays series, and Bird, a new essay that will surely take its place among the classics of the genre.

In the words of the poet Stanley Kunitz, Mary Oliver's poetry is fine and deep; it reads like a blessing. Her special gift is to connect us with our sources in the natural world, its beauties and terrors and mysteries and consolations.

For anyone who values poetry and essays, for anyone who cares about birds, Owls and Other Fantasies will be a treasured gift; for those who love both, it will be essential reading.

A private person by nature, Mary Oliver (1935-2019) gave very few interviews over the years. Instead, she preferred to let her work speak for itself. And speak it has, for the past five decades, to countless readers. The New York Times recently acknowledged Mary Oliver as far and away, this country's best-selling poet. Born in a small town in Ohio, Oliver published her first book of poetry in 1963 at the age of 28; No Voyage and Other Poems, originally printed in the UK by Dent Press, was reissued in the United States in 1965 by Houghton Mifflin. Oliver has since published twenty books of poetry and six books of prose. As a young woman, Oliver studied at Ohio State University and Vassar College, but took no degree. She lived for several years at the home of Edna St. Vincent Millay in upper New York state, companion to the poet's sister Norma Millay. It was there, in the late '50s, that she met photographer Molly Malone Cook. For more than forty years, Cook and Oliver made their home together, largely in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where they lived until Cook's death in 2005. Over the course of her long and illustrious career, Oliver has received numerous awards. Her fourth book, American Primitive, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984. She has also received the Shelley Memorial Award; a Guggenheim Fellowship; an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Achievement Award; the Christopher Award and the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award for House of Light; the National Book Award for New and Selected Poems; a Lannan Foundation Literary Award; and the New England Booksellers Association Award for Literary Excellence. Oliver's essays have appeared in Best American Essays 1996, 1998, 2001; the Anchor Essay Annual 1998, as well as Orion, Onearth and other periodicals. Oliver was editor of Best American Essays 2009. Oliver's books on the craft of poetry, A Poetry Handbook and Rules for the Dance, are used widely in writing programs. She is an acclaimed reader and has read in practically every state as well as other countries. She has led workshops at various colleges and universities, and held residencies at Case Western Reserve University, Bucknell University, University of Cincinnati, and Sweet Briar College. From 1995, for five years, she held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College. She has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from The Art Institute of Boston (1998), Dartmouth College (2007) and Tufts University (2008).

Molly Malone Cook (1925-2005), was born in San Francisco. One of the first photographers hired by the Village Voice, in 1960 she opened what was probably the first photography gallery on the East Coast. She also owned a bookstore, which was occasionally staffed by the filmmaker John Waters. Later, Cook became a literary agent to Oliver and other writers. Oliver and Cook lived together for more than forty years.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780807068755
ISBN 10	0807068756
Title	Owls and Other Fantasies
Author	Mary Oliver
Condition	Unavailable
Binding type	Paperback
Publisher	Beacon Press
Year published	2006-04-01
Number of pages	88
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable