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Thirst

$14.00 Paperback
$23.00 Hardcover

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Thirst, a collection of forty-three poems, introduces two new directions in Oliver’s work. Grappling with grief at the death of her beloved partner of over forty years, she strives to experience sorrow as a path to spiritual progress, grief as part of loving and not its end. And within these pages she chronicles for the first time her discovery of faith, without abandoning the love of the physical world that has been a hallmark of her work for four decades. In three stunning long poems, Oliver explores the dimensions and tests the parameters of religious doctrine, asking of being good, for example, “To what purpose? / Hope of Heaven? Not that. But to enter / the other kingdom: grace, and imagination, / and the multiple sympathies: to be as a leaf, a rose,/ a dolphin.”

“To read Thirst is to feel gratitude for the simple fact of being alive. This is not surprising, as it is the effect [Oliver’s] best work has produced in readers for the past 43 years.” —Angela O’Donnell, America magazine