Mary Oliver
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award Winning Poet
Evidence (UK Edition)
In her latest collection, Evidence, Mary Oliver delves even deeper than she has in the past into the mysteries of life, love and death. Exploring the evidence presented to us daily by the natural world, Oliver offers poems of arresting beauty and insight, inspired by Wordsworth’s lines: ‘To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.’ Never shy of letting the power of an image lie in unadorned language, Oliver’s work here reflects on the power of love and the great gifts of the natural world. In ‘There Are a Lot of Mockingbirds in This Book’ she writes:
but this isn’t nature
where the sweetest things,
being hidden in leaves
and thorn-thick bushes
reveal themselves rarely—
this is a book
of the heart’s rapture,
of hearing and praising…
Praise
“One of the astonishing aspects of Oliver’s work is the consistency of tone over this long period [of her career]. What changes is an increased focus on nature and an increased precision with language that has made her one of our very best poets . . . There is no complaint in Ms. Oliver’s poetry, no whining, but neither is there the sense that life is in any way easy . . . These poems sustain us rather than divert us. Although few poets have fewer human beings in their poems than Mary Oliver, it is ironic that few poets also go so far to help us forward.”
—Stephen Dobyns, New York Times Book Review