A Thousand Mornings: Poems

By Mary Oliver

The New York Times-bestselling collection of poems from a celebrated Pulitzer Prize-winning poet

In A Thousand Mornings, Mary Oliver returns to the imagery that has come to define her life’s work, transporting us to the marshland and coastline of her beloved home, Provincetown, Massachusetts. Whether studying the leaves of a tree or mourning her treasured dog Percy, Oliver is open to the teachings contained in the smallest of moments and explores with startling clarity, humor, and kindness the mysteries of our daily experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Release date: Oct 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781101595978

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

PENGUIN BOOKS

A THOUSAND MORNINGS

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

PROSE

Blue Pastures

Winter Hours

A Poetry Handbook

PENGUIN BOOKS

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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First published in the United States of America by The Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2012

Published in Penguin Books 2013

Copyright © 2012 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

Reviews for A Thousand Mornings

[juva_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A brief collection of poems that in one moment inspires through allusion to nature's beauty and in another stuns through revelation of humanity's hubris. These poems are by turns, thoughtful, mournful, meditative, compelling and energizing. A lovely collection to savor and contemplate.

Favorite poems: Today, The Morning Paper, On Traveling to Beautiful Places, Life Story

[jrobinw · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love Mary Oliver's poetry so much I rushed through this book. Now I will go back and read it more slowly to savor her meanings and rhythms. I have it rated "really liked" it now, but may change it to amazing when the poems have time to sink into my depths.

[bookworm12_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

 I am not a poetry person, but so many people told me to try Mary Oliver. This was my first foray into her work and I absolutely loved it. Her observations about the beauty of simple moments in nature around her took my breath away.

“The man who has many answers
is often found
in the theaters of information
where he offers, graciously,
his deep findings.

While the man who has only questions,
to comfort himself, makes music.”

[jamestomasino · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Mary Oliver's poetry is like stepping into a garden on a spring day and taking a deep breath. It doesn't fix everything but in some ways it really does.

[whatsmacksaid · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved every bit of it. Highly recommend.

[lasvegasbookie · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love Mary Oliver! She speaks to my soul, my subconscious. She makes me pay attention, listen.

[bhutton_10 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Sometimes something comes along at exactly the right time to explain and describe what you are going through. As I move into the next phase of life this collection helps put structure and words what I am experiencing. One of the first collections of poetry that has truly moved me.

[mariannem85-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Just brilliant

[crazymamie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

So I just picked this up from the library today - I had requested it for next month's poetry read for Mark's AAC. I took it out to the deck with me to just read one or two of the poems and get a feel for it, but I ended up just reading straight through. Really lovely collection of poetry mostly themed on nature. I loved the final lines of "Hurricane" which read:

"For some things there are no wrong seasons.
Which is what I dream of for me."

Probably my favorite was "I Happened to be Standing", but I also loved "The Poet Compares Human Nature to the Ocean From Which We Came". It's short, so here it is for you:

"The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth,
it can lie down silk breathing
or toss havoc shoreward; it can give

gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth
like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can
sweet-talk entirely. As I can too,

and so, no doubt, can you, and you."

[judycroome_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

My first exposure to Mary Oliver's poetry. I enjoyed the poems, especially "The Moth, The Mountains, The Rivers","Hum, Hum" and "The Man Who Has Many Answers." Will be reading more of her poems in future.

[tangledthread · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mary Oliver's poetry always strikes a chord with me. This collection is very satisfying.

[sarahwagner503 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Amazing, beautiful prose. Mary Oliver never disappoints.

[dukefan86 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoy Mary Oliver's poetry so much! This is a great collection. I especially like how she describes things in nature.

[amillion-863749 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I've never been a big poetry reader, but I found this collection particularly intriguing. There were several poems, "The Mockingbird", "The Moth, The Mountains, The Rivers", "Green, Green is My Sister's House", "Extending the Airport Runway", "The Poet Compares Human Nature to the Ocean From Which We Came", and "The Man Who Has Many Answers" I found to be very personally poignant. Oliver's poetry is very accessible. I'm heading to the library for more...

[sullywriter_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful contemplative verse.

[bell7_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mary Oliver writes free verse poetry that has a lot of flow but not a lot of rhyme. Many of the poems are reflections of nature, sometimes almost a worshipful mood. I like nature, but not quite to that extent, so I found myself reading against the grain at times. But I enjoyed her vivid imagery and straightforward approach. Sure, I had to look up a word or a phrase here and there to make sure I understood, but I didn't feel like the poet was trying to be obscure or hard to understand the way some poetry can be. One of my favorite poems was "The Mockingbird," the one in the collection that I could read over and over. Here's just a piece of it: "for he is the thief of other sounds-- / whistles and truck brakes and dry hinges / plus all the songs / of other birds in his neighborhood; // mimicking and elaborating, / he sings with humor and bravado, / so I have to wait a long time / for the softer voice of his own life // to come through."

[yeldabmoers · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mary Oliver's collection of poems, A Thousand Mornings, published this fall, is a poignant meditation on nature and the self. It reminded me of the nature writings of Annie Dillard, the essays of Thoreau and Emerson, and the poems of Whitman and the Transcendentalists. Oliver could be an adopted poet of that movement.

The poems are almost naked, sometimes abrupt, but if nature could speak, this is what she could say. Oliver is certainly awed by her surroundings, the sea, animals and the spirituality of nature. I think the best way to depict her style is to include one of her poems.

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.

I had never heard of Mary Oliver before reading this little black and grey book of poems. I felt ignorant for not having heard of her. She is one of the most renowned poets of our time, a Pulitzer Prize winner and a recipient of the National Book Award.

Pithy and stark, her new collection is a quick read, but you find yourself reading each poem over and over again. They are unlike anything I've ever read, and I highly recommend them to other readers of nature and spirituality.

[edgoldberg · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Mary Oliver and I seem to have one thing in common: we both love the ocean, as you can see in her short poem, The Poet Compares Human Nature to the Ocean From Which We Came:

The ocean can do craziness, it can do smooth
it can lie down like silk breathing
or toss havoc shoreward; it can give

gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth
like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can
sweet-talk entirely. As I can too,

and so, no doubt, can you, and you.

Or the poem Tides:

Every day the sea
blue gray green lavender
pulls away leaving the harbor's
dark cobbled undercoat.

But that is apparently where our similarity ends, Mary's and mine, because she can put into words those feelings whereas I can't. I'm not a poetry lover, generally, but Susan and I were introduced to Mary Oliver via a Beth Kephart book and Susan became an avid fan. I like simple poetry, short poetry, poetry that conveys thoughts and feelings in a sparsity of words. Maybe that's why I like Mary Oliver.

In A Thousand Mornings, she discusses age, life, joyfulness, sorrow, dissatisfaction such as In Traveling to Beautiful Places she says

...But it's late for all of us,
in truth the only ship there is
is the ship we are all on
burning the world as we go.

Whatever it is about the way Mary Oliver expresses her thoughts and feelings, she seems, in many ways, to have captured mine, as well. See if Ms. Oliver captures your feelings.