Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays

By Mary Oliver

A perfect introduction to Mary Oliver’s poetry, this stunning collection features 26 nature poems and prose writings about the birds that played such an important role in the Pulitzer Prize winner’s life.
 
Within these pages you will find hawks, hummingbirds, and herons; kingfishers, catbirds, and crows; swans, swallows and, of course, the snowy owl, among a dozen others-including ten poems that have never before been collected. She adds two beautifully crafted essays, “Owls,” selected for the Best American Essays series, and “Bird,” a new essay that will surely take its place among the classics of the genre.

In the words of the poet Stanley Kunitz, “Mary Oliver's poetry is fine and deep; it reads like a blessing. Her special gift is to connect us with our sources in the natural world, its beauties and terrors and mysteries and consolations.”

For anyone who values poetry and essays, for anyone who cares about birds, Owls and Other Fantasies will be a treasured gift; for those who love both, it will be essential reading.

This book was published with two different covers. Customers will be shipped the book with one of the available covers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Release date: Sep 30, 2003
• ISBN: 9780807096826

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

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

   love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

The Dipper

Once I saw

in a quick-falling, white-veined stream,

among the leafed islands of the wet rocks,

a small bird, and knew it

from the pages of a book; it was

the dipper, and dipping he was,

as well as, sometimes, on a rock-peak, starting up

the clear, strong pipe of his voice; at this,

there being no words to transcribe, I had to

bend forward, as it were,

into his frame of mind, catching

everything I could in the tone,

cadence, sweetness, and briskness

of his affirmative report.

Though not by words, it was

a more than satisfactory way to the

bridge of understanding. This happened

in Colorado

more than half a century ago—

more, certainly, than half my lifetime ago—

and, just as certainly, he has been sleeping for decades

in the leaves beside the stream,

his crumble of white bones, his curl of flesh

comfortable even so.

And still I hear him—

and whenever I open the ponderous book of riddles

he sits with his black feet hooked to the page,

his eyes cheerful, still burning with water-love—

and thus the world is full of leaves and feathers,

and comfort, and instruction. I do not even remember

your name, great river,

but since that hour I have lived

simply,

in the joy of the body as full and clear

as falling water; the pleasures of the mind

like a dark bird dipping in and out, tasting and singing.

Spring

All day the flicker

has anticipated

the lust of the season, by

shouting. He scouts up

Reviews for Owls and Other Fantasies

[stacymichelle21 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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[melissarochelle_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I feel like a bad nature lover because I do not LOVE Mary Oliver's poetry as much as other people. Like I feel weird only rating this 3-stars, but given how much Oliver has written about nature, to only have 80-ish pages about birds feels like a letdown. I wasn't blown away and I wanted to be. In the essay about the gull, I just kept screaming, WHY AREN'T YOU CALLING A BIRD REHAB?!

My favorites:

From "The Kingfisher": "I think this is the prettiest world--so long as you don't mind a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life that doesn't have its splash of happiness."

"Backyard" -- the idea she conveys here, I understand completely and the birds DO love it.

[whitewavedarling · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I return sporadically to this book when I want a sense of calm. The calm of a knowing bird's silent gaze, the calm of a swan slipping along the top of a lake, the calm of birdsong coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. There's a peace in these poems that I fall into, whether reading it in glimpses or in whole.

Nature poetry doesn't always have the power (to me) of these poems. Often enough, I grow bored or annnoyed with it seemingly trying to do more than it does, or be more than it is. Pushing language too hard and erupting overtop what it's supposedly attempting. But Oliver's poems are something else, quiet and good and easy, but still with an awareness of the larger world even as she examines the simple forms, actions, and attentions described so beautifully here.

And of course there are the essays. When I come back to this work, I say I won't cry over a re-read of "Bird", and then of course I do indeed cry over a reread of "Bird." Perhaps one day I'll look up interviews or see what she's said more about this essay and the experience driving it, or perhaps I'll just reread it again and cry again with the imagining.

The poems here are gorgeous. And in a world so dark as it can be, sometimes the simplest glimpse of a bird, as in these pages, can mean everything.

Recommended.

[laytonwoman3rd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A volume of poems about the natural world, not excluding its human inhabitants, by a talented observer. This contains "Wild Geese", which I have loved for ages, and "Some Herons', which was new to me, but hits all the same exquisitely right notes. These poems are all highly visual...if you've ever seen a catbird, you will recognize the movements described in its selection here, you will see her "flirting with her tail" as her suitor struts in the shadow of a lilac in his jaunty black cap. It requires very little effort to enjoy these deceptively simple offerings. Sheer beauty is an uncomplicated thing.

[jim53_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The best word for this collection is "delightful." Oliver sees wonders in mundane things; in these poems and two short essays, she sees them primarily in various types of birds and their habitats. Her literal descriptions and metaphorical references shine with meaning and music. Highly recommended no matter how much or how little poetry you've read.

[violetbramble · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This collection contains 26 poems and 2 essays about various species of birds. I was already a fan of Oliver's nature poetry about the many bird and animal species she observes in the marshlands of Cape Cod. This was the first time I'd read any of her essays. One of the essays, titled Bird, tells the tale of an injured gull Oliver found on the beach. The gull had an injured wing and two injured feet. It couldn't fly or walk. Despite her better judgement Oliver took the gull home. The gull lived in her home for months and became a part of her life as Oliver waited for him to die. I read this essay on the train on my way to see my mother for Mother's Day. This essay was so beautiful it made me cry. I sat on a NJ Transit train sobbing over an essay about a gull. This is how Oliver described the gull: Imagine lifting the lid from a jar and finding it filled not with darkness but with light. Bird was like that. Startling, elegant, alive. I loved this entire collection, but esp the gull essay. Highly recommended.

[libsue · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Mary Oliver's thoughts on the wild birds of Provincetown. She is a master of poetry.