Upstream: Selected Essays

By Mary Oliver

One of O, The Oprah Magazine’s Ten Best Books of the Year 

The New York Times bestselling collection of essays from beloved poet, Mary Oliver.

“There's hardly a page in my copy of Upstream that isn't folded down or underlined and scribbled on, so charged is Oliver's language . . .” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air

“Uniting essays from Oliver’s previous books and elsewhere, this gem of a collection offers a compelling synthesis of the poet’s thoughts on the natural, spiritual and artistic worlds . . .” —The New York Times
 
“In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.” 

So begins Upstream, a collection of essays in which revered poet Mary Oliver reflects on her willingness, as a young child and as an adult, to lose herself within the beauty and mysteries of both the natural world and the world of literature. Emphasizing the significance of her childhood “friend” Walt Whitman, through whose work she first understood that a poem is a temple, “a place to enter, and in which to feel,” and who encouraged her to vanish into the world of her writing, Oliver meditates on the forces that allowed her to create a life for herself out of work and love. As she writes, “I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.” 
 
Upstream follows Oliver as she contemplates the pleasure of artistic labor, her boundless curiosity for the flora and fauna that surround her, and the responsibility she has inherited from Shelley, Wordsworth, Emerson, Poe, and Frost, the great thinkers and writers of the past, to live thoughtfully, intelligently, and to observe with passion. Throughout this collection, Oliver positions not just herself upstream but us as well as she encourages us all to keep moving, to lose ourselves in the awe of the unknown, and to give power and time to the creative and whimsical urges that live within us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Release date: Oct 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9780698405622

Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver (1935–2019), one of the most popular and widely honored poets in the U.S., was the author of more than thirty books of poetry and prose. Over the course of her long and illustrious career, she received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for American Primitive in 1984. Oliver 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. She lived most of her life in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Book preview

Cover for Upstream

Praise for Upstream

"There’s hardly a page in my copy of Upstream that isn’t folded down or underlined and scribbled on, so charged is Oliver’s language. . . . I need a moment away from unceasing word drip of debates about the election, about whether Elena Ferrante has the right to privacy, about whether Bob Dylan writes ‘Literature.’ I need a moment, more than a moment, in the steady and profound company of Mary Oliver and I think you might need one too."

—Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air

Uniting essays from Oliver’s previous books and elsewhere, this gem of a collection offers a compelling synthesis of the poet’s thoughts on the natural, spiritual, and artistic worlds. . . . With each page, the book gains accumulative power. The various threads intertwine and become taut.

—The New York Times

When reading Mary Oliver in any form—poetry or prose—you oughtn’t be surprised when suddenly you find yourself at a full stop. When you come across a sentence so arresting in its beauty—its construction, its word choice, its truths—you can’t help but pause, hit ‘reread,’ and await the transformative soaking-in, the awakening of mind and soul that’s sure to settle deeply. She never fails to stir us from whatever is the natural speck before our gaze to the immeasurable heaven’s dome above and beyond.

—Chicago Tribune

"Upstream is a testament to a lifetime of paying attention, and an invitation to readers to do the same."

—The Christian Science Monitor

The richness of these essays—part revelation, part instruction—will prompt readers to dive in again and again.

—The Washington Post

A tremendously vitalizing read . . . Grounding and elevating at the same time.

—Brain Pickings

"Oliver immerses us in an ever-widening circle, in which a shrub or flower opens onto the cosmos, revealing our meager, masterful place in it. Hold Upstream in your hands, and you hold a miracle of ravishing imagery and startling revelation."

—Minneapolis Star Tribune

Highly recommended as an entrée to Oliver’s works, this volume should also be required reading for artists of all kinds, not just writers, and especially aspiring creative minds.

—Library Journal (starred review)

Distinguished, honored, prolific, popular, bestselling—adjectives that don’t always hang out together—describe Oliver’s body of work, nearly three dozen volumes of poetry and collections of prose. This group (nineteen essays, sixteen from previous collections) is a distillation of sorts. Born of two ‘blessings—the natural world, and the world of writing: literature,’ it partakes of the spirits of a journal, a commonplace book, and a meditation. The natural world pictured here is richly various, though Oliver seems most drawn to waterways. All manner of aquatic life—shark and mackerel, duck and egret—accompany her days, along with spiders, foxes, even a bear. Her keen observations come as narrative (following a fox) or as manual (building a house) or as poems masquerading as description (‘I have seen bluefish arc and sled across the water, an acre of them, leaping and sliding back under the water, then leaping again, toothy, terrible, lashed by hunger’). . . . The message of her book for its readers is a simple and profound one: open your eyes.

—Publishers Weekly

Part paean to nature and part meditation on the writing life, this elegant and simply written book is a neo-Romantic celebration of life and the pursuit of art that is sure to enchant Oliver’s many admirers. A lyrical, tender essay collection.

—Kirkus Reviews

PENGUIN BOOKS

UPSTREAM

Born in a small town in Ohio, Mary Oliver published her first book of poetry in 1963 at the age of twenty-eight. Over the course of her long career, she received numerous awards. Her fourth book, American Primitive, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984. She led workshops and held residencies at various colleges and universities, including Bennington College, where she held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching. She died in 2019.

SELECT TITLES ALSO BY MARY OLIVER

POETRY

American Primitive

Dream Work

New and Selected Poems, Volume One

White Pine

The Leaf and the Cloud

What Do We Know

Why I Wake Early

New and Selected Poems, Volume Two

Swan

A Thousand Mornings

Dog Songs

Blue Horses

Felicity

Devotions

PROSE

Blue Pastures

Winter Hours

A Poetry Handbook

PENGUIN BOOKS

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

penguinrandomhouse.com

First published in the United States of America by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2016

Published in Penguin Books 2019

Copyright © 2016 by NW Orchard LLC

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

The Acknowledgments constitute an extension of this copyright page.

ISBN 9780143130086 (paperback)

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

Names: Oliver, Mary, 1935– author.

Title: Upstream: Select Essays / Mary Oliver.

Description: New York: Penguin Press, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016043612 (print) | LCCN 2016050445 (ebook) | ISBN 9781594206702 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780698405622 (ebook)

Classification: LCC PS3565.L5 A6 2016 (print) | LCC PS3565.L5 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016043612

Cover design: Darren Haggar

Cover image: Gallery Stock Mobile

btb_ppg_c0_r3

For Anne Taylor

Contents

Praise for Upstream

About the Author

Select Titles Also By Mary Oliver

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Section One

UPSTREAM

MY FRIEND WALT WHITMAN

STAYING ALIVE

OF POWER AND TIME

Section Two

BLUE PASTURES

THE PONDS

SISTER TURTLE

Section Three

EMERSON: AN INTRODUCTION

THE BRIGHT EYES OF ELEONORA: POE’S DREAM OF RECAPTURING THE IMPOSSIBLE

SOME THOUGHTS ON WHITMAN

WORDSWORTH’S MOUNTAIN

Section Four

SWOON

BIRD

OWLS

TWO SHORT ONES

Who Cometh Here?

Ropes

WINTER HOURS

BUILDING THE HOUSE

Section Five

PROVINCETOWN

Acknowledgments

. . . in solitude, or in that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings and yet they sympathise not with us, we love the flowers, the grass and the waters and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring in the blue air there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart.

Shelley, On Love

SECTION ONE

Upstream

One tree is like another tree, but not too much. One tulip is like the next tulip, but not altogether. More or less like people—a general outline, then the stunning individual strokes. Hello Tom, hello Andy. Hello Archibald Violet, and Clarissa Bluebell. Hello Lilian Willow, and Noah, the oak tree I have hugged and kissed every first day of spring for the last thirty years. And in reply its thousands of leaves tremble! What a life is ours! Doesn’t anybody in the world anymore want to get up in the

middle of the night and

sing?

_______

In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be. Wordsworth studied himself and found the subject astonishing. Actually what he studied was his relationship to the harmonies and also the discords of the natural world. That’s what created the excitement.

_______

I walk, all day, across the heaven-verging field.

_______

And whoever thinks these are worthy, breathy words I am writing down is kind. Writing is neither vibrant life nor docile artifact but a text that would put all its money on the hope of suggestion. Come with me into the field of sunflowers is a better line than anything you will find here, and the sunflowers themselves far more wonderful than any words about them.

_______

I walked, all one spring day, upstream, sometimes in the midst of the ripples, sometimes along the shore. My company were violets, Dutchman’s-breeches, spring beauties, trilliums, bloodroot, ferns rising so curled one could feel the upward push of the delicate hairs upon their bodies. My parents were downstream, not far away, then farther away because I was walking the wrong way, upstream instead of downstream. Finally I was advertised on the hotline of help, and yet there I was, slopping along happily in the stream’s coolness. So maybe it was the right way after all. If this was lost, let us all be lost always. The beech leaves were just slipping their copper coats; pale green and quivering they arrived into the year. My heart opened, and opened again. The water pushed against my effort, then its glassy permission to step ahead touched my ankles. The sense of going toward the source.

I do not think that I ever, in fact, returned home.

_______

Do you think there is anything not attached by its unbreakable cord to everything else? Plant your peas and your corn in the field when the moon is full, or risk failure. This has been understood since planting began. The attention of the seed to the draw of the moon is, I suppose, measurable, like the tilt of the planet. Or, maybe not—maybe you have to add some immeasurable ingredient made of the hour, the singular field, the hand of the sower.

_______

It lives in my imagination strongly that the black oak is pleased to be a black oak. I mean all of them, but in particular one tree that leads me into Blackwater, that is as shapely as a flower, that I have often hugged and put my lips to. Maybe it is a hundred years old. And who knows what it dreamed of in the first springs of its life, escaping the cottontail’s teeth and everything dangerous else. Who knows when supreme patience took hold, and the wind’s wandering among its leaves was enough of motion, of travel.

_______

Little by little I waded from the region of coltsfoot to the spring beauties. From there to the trilliums. From there to the bloodroot. Then the dark ferns. Then the wild music of the waterthrush.

_______

When the chesty, fierce-furred bear becomes

[jamestomasino · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Her essays read like poems but not as tight, not as sharp and poignant. This is a very good book though and worth a spot on your nightstand. Taking a walk with Mary Oliver it's like taking off a heavy coat or maybe your shoes and socks and walking into the grass of a meadow. You're a bit more sensitive to the world by feel more for the change.

[melissarochelle_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I did not like the narration (and didn't like that there were multiple narrators, Hala was my favorite if I had to choose) and two of the essays are also in a short collection I read last year (Owls and other Fantasies).

At one point, this collection of essays felt more like literary criticism; as I haven't read Poe, Wordsworth, Emerson, or Whitman in years, I couldn't relate to Oliver's deep love of their words. Overall, I would've preferred more reflection on nature which is what I thought I was getting with a title like Upstream, but this is a pretty mixed bag that tends to focus more on being a creative, loving the previously mentioned poets, and building a house. There ARE a couple essays with a more centralized focus on nature, but as I've mentioned, I read them last year (and I'm still left with the same question after Bird -- DID THEY CALL A REHABBER?!)

If the entire collection had been like Section Two (Blue Pastures, The Ponds, Sister Turtle) and read by a single narrator, I think I would've enjoyed it more.

[bibleblaster · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Greatly enjoyed this collection of thoughtful pieces by Oliver. Filled with profound passages and keen insights. This, for example, on Edgar Allan Poe:
In this universe, we are given two gifts: the ability to love, and the ability to ask questions. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us. This is Poe's real story. As it is ours. And this is why we honor him, why we are fascinated far past the simple narratives. He writes about our own inescapable destiny.

[aidan767 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Some good essays. Not much continuity. Made me want to read Annie Dillard.

[wvlibrarydude · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful collection of essays that actually seems like you're reading poetry at times. There were a couple that were not focused on nature, but were about writers like Poe, Whitman, and Emerson. These essays were good, they didn't bring the interest in joy that her observations of the natural world formed in my mind.
Mary Oliver has easily become one of my favorite authors. Just reading this book and a thousand mornings, has solidified my interest to read and revisit her works from now on. For those who have not read Oliver yet, start now and enjoy.

[wordandbeauty · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Some good essays. Not much continuity. Made me want to read Annie Dillard.

[laytonwoman3rd · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love Mary Oliver's deceptively simple poetry, and this collection of essays proves that she can make prose as poetic as verse, particularly when musing on the natural world. As a further benefit, there are pieces on Wordsworth, Poe and Whitman as succinct and downright useful as anything I have ever read. Oliver has lived with Whitman since she was a teenager, much as I have lived with Faulkner. Her loving, unacademic approach to his complexities has encouraged me to give Leaves of Grass another go with her observations to guide me.

[juliestielstra · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lovely, dense, serious. Imagery that made me catch my breath ("Great blue herons, like angels carved by Giacometti..."). An especially fine one about the demands made by one's art, "wrestling with the angel." "If I have an appointment with you at three o' clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not come at all." A lot of nature writing can be summed up as "isn't nature pretty." These are not quite like that. Persist and you will be rewarded.

[alexezell · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A slim but thought-provoking collection that is rooted in Nature's impact on our lives both external and internal. It also delves into the author's personal connection to several literary greats. In a sense, it's wide-ranging but also deeply personal. That veering from one to the other provides a rhythm and structure that connects the essays in engaging ways.

[osbaldistone · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A fine collection of essays, many directly about writing and the life of a writer. I love Mary Oliver's voice.

[ealhmund · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A fine collection of essays, many directly about writing and the life of a writer. I love Mary Oliver's voice.

[ldvoorberg · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The first essay was my favourite, being a lyrical reflection on spending time in nature. After that most of the essays are short enough to read in a quick sitting or just before bed. worthwhile

[kaylaraeintheway · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A great collection on nature and literature from Mary Oliver, who is fast becoming a favorite of mine. Her essay on an injured gull she took in made me cry on the plane, and the essays on Poe, Emerson, and Whitman warmed my English-major heart (and made me wish I could write a final paper like that). A small and lovely collection from one of the best.

[rmckeown_9 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I try to avoid repeating author’s too closely together for Likely Stories. This becomes particularly difficult when one of my favorite authors pops up. However, in the case of Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver, I decided to break the rule. These essays are almost poems in themselves, and I have discovered another side to the poet. Nature is much more than a theme for most of her poems, rather it is closely held and dynamic aspect of her work. I said the when I reviewed Swan, I considered her a poetry soul mate. Upstream has reinforced that belief.

I freely admit Emerson is not a favorite of mine, but Oliver has turned my head in a less-than-12-page essay. She writes, “The best use of literature bends not toward the narrow and the absolute but to the extravagant and the possible. Answers are no part of it; rather, it is the opinions, the rhapsodic persuasions, the engrafted logics, the clues that are to the mind of the reader the possible keys to his own self-quarrels, his own predicament. This is the crux of Emerson, who does not advance straight ahead but wanders to all sides of an issue; who delivers suggestions with a kindly gesture – who opens doors and tells us to look at things for ourselves. The one thing he is adamant about is that we should look – we must look – for that is the liquor of life, that brooding upon issues, that attention to thought even as we weed the garden or milk the cow” (69) [Italics by author]

Mary Oliver closes section one of the book with a peak into her writing process. She writes, “It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive. If I have a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all. // There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success, to the striver, is worth everything. The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave it to neither power nor time” (30).

I adopt this passage, this essay, as my anthem, as my creed, as my goal.

Another favorite of mine is “Swoon.” She discovers a nesting spider, and with fascination I can only admire, she spins a lovely story. Mary writes, “This is the moment in an essay when the news culminates and, subtly or bluntly, the moral appears. It is a music to be played with the lightest fingers. All the questions that the spider’s curious life made me ask, I know I can find answered in some book of knowledge, of which there are many. But the palace of knowledge is different from the palace of discovery, in which I am truly, a Copernicus. The world is not what I thought, but different, and more! I have seen it with my own eyes! // Bur a spider? Even that? // Even That” (125) [Italics by author]

I haven’t commented as much as usual in this review, because I want to dangle a few bites of Mary Oliver’s splendid collection of essays, Upstream: Selected Essays, and let each reader take the bait and swim along with her. 5 stars

--Jim, 11/13/16

[kimmeyer-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Most of the essays are really lovely! There are a few that are well-written but not personally resonant for me, but mostly it's a great collection of writing on nature and creative work.

[lilyroseshadowlyn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Absolutely loved this collection of essays. Mary Oliver has a way with words that not only draws the reader in, but makes you forget your surroundings for awhile as you delve deeper into her world. It's a small but deep glimpse into a beautiful mind that sees the world differently than ordinary people. I honestly felt like I was walking the paths with a kindred spirit.

Received for review

[lamotamant · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In her essay collection, Upstream, Mary Oliver sets us on a trail through forest and by shore as she expertly layers in experience and thought from essay to essay. A collection of three parts, the latter two being expansions on the first, Upstream is Oliver's beautifully writ reflection on where she comes from, her kinship with the natural world and its wild ones, and the authors that have warmed her blood and quickened her own ink.

Oliver's essays on Whitman, Emerson, and Poe are insightful pieces that were immensely enjoyable to read. They offer perspective and interpretation on both each author's work and the motivation behind it and I would quickly recommend Oliver's essays as strong companion pieces to experiencing and/or revisiting each author in turn. Oliver illumines wonderful points about these specific authors as well as literature as a whole. As with the assertion, from her "Emerson: An Introduction," that

"The best use of literature bends not toward the narrow and the absolute but to the extravagant and the possible. Answers are no part of it; rather, it is the opinions, the rhapsodic persuasions, the engrafted logics, the clues that are to the mind of the reader the possible keys to his own self-quarrels, his own predicament. This is the crux of Emerson, who does not advance straight ahead but wanders to all sides of an issue; who delivers suggestions with a kindly gesture— who opens doors and tells us to look at things for ourselves. The one thing he is adamant about is that we should look— we must look— for that is the liquor of life, that brooding upon issues, that attention to thought even as we weed the garden or milk the cow."

The aspect of Oliver's Upstream that most connected me with her writing and most moved me to start reading her poetry is her ability to vividly capture the impress and beauty of the wild. Her prose is warm honey dripping from fresh honey comb and freshly spilled blood on snow. It holds a visceral heat and weight to it that is stirring and captivating. It made me think of Waldeinsamkeit, the 'untranslatable' German word for "the feeling of being alone in the woods" with wald meaning wood/forest and einsamkeit meaning loneliness or solitude. More yearn for than think of really. Thanks to an old yet never sated etymology addiction and a penchant for eagerly grabbing the bait whenever an article like "50 Untranslatable Words From Other Languages" pops up in my radar, waldeinsamkeit is what comes to mind when I think of having an intense connection with nature. Where one can be swallowed up by the underside of a trees' leaves or the glow surrounding the moon on a windy night; a perfect contentment in solitude while everything breathes around you. I can't say 'breathes' is really the word, that it really expresses a clear expression. That otherness felt in nature, as in literature and the poignance of both, is beyond my abilities of description but Oliver does it credit in her essay titled "Staying Alive".

"In the first of these—the natural world—I felt at ease; nature was full of beauty and interest and mystery, also good and bad luck, but never misuse. The second world—the world of literature—offered me, besides the pleasures of form, the sustentation of empathy... and I ran for it. I realized in it. I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything—other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned: that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness—the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books—can re-dignify the worst-stung heart."

Upstream is a collection I can definitely see myself revisiting and I look forward to reading more from Mary Oliver. I think it holds a wealth of inspiration for introspection and there are pieces of it that are still tumbling around my head and working themselves into all sorts of channels. Pieces that need to continually traipse about my mind in lewdly luminescent & emboldened letters as a consistent reminder such as,

"You must not ever stop being whimsical.
And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life."

I'd like to thank NetGalley for giving me the chance to discover, read, and review a new-to-me author with this ARC.

[beamis12 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

4.5 I have read her poetry for years, she in one of my favorites but until this book I never knew she was an essayist. The beautiful writing and thoughts that are expressed in her poetry are also expressed in her writing. Thoughts on creativity, need for solitude, the wonder of the natural world, and those writers that she has loved since her youth.

Divided into three sections, the last two tying back to the first. Emerson, Poe, Whitman, those writers she finds indispensable to her own thoughts, peace of mind, fuel for her soul. I read these at night, before bed a few at a time and cherished the time I spent with them. Filled with special insights and wonder this was a special and beautiful read.

ARC from Netgalley.

[thornton37814 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When I first saw this book, its subtitle was "essays and poems." When I received the book, its subtitle was "selected essays." I love Mary Oliver's poetry so I was curious about her writing in the essay format; however, I really was not that thrilled about the book having very little poetry of hers with a couple of exceptions, introducing the book and perhaps one section. I was, however, pleasantly surprised that many of her essays were almost poetic because of the way she described things. In one section she reflects on the writings of other poets, and parts of their poems are included. I found all of the essays readable, but a few did not quite live up to the poetic characteristic of others. Still, all in all, it is a good collection, even if I was disappointed Oliver's own poetry was not really present. This review is based on an advance review copy received by the publisher through NetGalley for review purposes.