I’m not really sure how to tell you how enjoyable Mary Oliver’s new collection of poetry, A Thousand Mornings is. The poems she doles out are delicate and easy to read, but they linger with you, long after you’ve turned the page.

I read an interview with Mary Oliver in which she shared her writing process. She hides pencils and small scraps of paper along the trail she walks every morning, just in case she forgot her notebook, and needs to write something down. “Most mornings I’m up to see the sun, and that rising of the light moves me very much, and I’m used to thinking and feeling in words, so it sort of just happens,” she said in an interview this morning with NPR.

Mary Oliver has become well known for the natural world she recreates so well on the page (she won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984). She makes it look easy. In A Thousand Mornings, Mary Oliver does the same, but her poems are a little more diverse then her last several volumes. Bob Dylan makes a cameo appearance (what could be better?), as does the poet William Blake.

I Go Down to the Shore

I go down to the shore in the morning

and depending on the hour the waves

are rolling in or moving out,

and I say, oh, I am miserable,

what shall–

what should I do? And the sea says

in its lovely voice:

Excuse me, I have work to do.

Share