Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays
    Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays
    Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays
    Ebook73 pages25 minutes

    Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays

    By Mary Oliver

    4.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBeacon Press
    Release dateSep 30, 2003
    ISBN9780807096826
    Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays
    Author

    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.

    Read more from Mary Oliver

    Related to Owls and Other Fantasies

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Without Choice

      Jun 24, 2022

      Without Choice
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Must-Read Poetry: May 2019

      May 2, 2019

      Get a taste of six new collections, including the latest from Brooklyn's poet laureate Tina Chang. The post Must-Read Poetry: May 2019 appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2018

      Moon river, swollen river, river of starholeand bright, harness river, lichen river,river we velvet with our filth.River of butter and river of witches, rivercracked open careful like egg, or burstapart, unleashing its violet load.River mouths, river

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Yohanca Delgado

      Mar 9, 2021

      The widow arrived at LaGuardia on a Sunday, but the rumors about the woman who had rented a big apartment, sight unseen, had taken an earlier flight. We had already reviewed, on many occasions and in hushed tones, in the quiet that comes after long h

      15 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2020

      She was a security guard and even though her uniform was black I could seeIt was covered in blood, the marble floor was covered in blood, it wasSlowly pooling out from the space where HER HAND used to beOh my god, I said, then I started to say, YOUR

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Joy Of The Illegible

      Sep 1, 2023

      Books I Do Everything I’m Told by Megan Fernandes Tin House Books, 2023 paperback, 104 pages, $16.95 Megan Fernandes’ latest collection of poems, I Do Everything I’m Told, begins with an epigraph from Gwendolyn Brooks: “Sit where the light corrupts y

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems

      Nov 1, 2021

      All I wantis a good night and coffee in the morningwithout conversation so I can considerhow my life— which made a new life—is still so incomplete. How can something smallmultiply to something large? Mathematics is a strange science.Prayer is an impo

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2021

      A type of hickory, it grows by water.So are we fools to drive to the riverthe day after our most savage stormshave finally stopped to seea tree we’ve never seen before?To hike in cold mud through a leafless forest,to behold clearings now clutteredby

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems by Cynthia Cruz

      Jun 15, 2019

      I would like this poemto be a machine.Concise, metallic,a counting apparatus.A means to keep each momentcontained and fixed, akinto a series of Polaroids,photographed and fixedto cardboard or some otherpaper-panel backing.Then photographed and affixe

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Future Is Coming, That’s a Fact: Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore and Sarah Schulman in Conversation

      Jan 2, 2019

      What happened to the dream of the city as the place where you meet everyone you never imagined? Of queerness as ending borders rather than creating them. The post The Future Is Coming, That’s a Fact: Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore and Sarah Schulman in

      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Rot

      Sep 2, 2022

      Rot
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Anna Kavan’s Ice Age Dreams

      Nov 21, 2017

      Ice—the last novel Anna Kavan wrote before she was discovered dead with a syringe in her arm and her head resting on the case in which she kept her heroin—is a gem of speculative fiction. The post Anna Kavan’s Ice Age Dreams appeared first on The Mil

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Reconnecting After a Silence

      Dec 13, 2017

      BY JANE HIRSHFIELD 1 BECOME an open door. This can mean different things at different times. It might mean: Clear your calendar of other obligations, even if for only an hour or two, or a day or two, a week. It might mean: Find the courage to say—eve

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Five Poems

      Sep 1, 2023

      I am walking through the hotelEvery time I am so sadThat I want to die It’s a place where I can keepEverything I’ve never beenBrave enough to get to Poets have moons and moneyTo get themselves throughThe longest night imaginable But I’ve had these ro

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Where To Start With Louise Glück, Winner Of The 2020 Nobel Prize In Literature

      Oct 14, 2020

      The Swedish Academy has awarded this year's Nobel Prize in literature to Louise Gluck, a former U.S. poet laureate. The 16th woman to win the prestigious prize and the first American woman since Toni Morrison in 1993, Gluck is the author of 12 poetry

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Pilgrim Bell

      Aug 18, 2021

      The self I am today.Involves me.As a lake. Involves.Its cattails.It bears me.Tolerates.My cotton. I would prefer.Not. To be outlived.By anyone. I reserve the right.To refuse. Enchantment. The fables I tell.Always end. Wrong.The good archer.Dead.By a

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      from BLACK PASTORAL

      Nov 1, 2023

      somewheres, some lifetimes ago I have run so far, so long.There is nowhere I haven’t beenBut here, in this field, a bodyLength from the ragged brinkThat gives way to forest.I collapsed here, the thin, hard slipOf me whittled at both ends.I want badly

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Poe’s Secrets

      Oct 1, 2020

      Poe’s Secrets
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      What Ray Charles Says

      Mar 1, 2024

      The nighttime is the right time to be with the one you love, says Ray,but according to Hamlet, it’s when “churchyards yawn and hell itselfbreathes out contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,”says Hamlet, “and do such bitter business as

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2020

      The American linden sways nonplussed by the storm,a bounce here, a shimmy there, just shaking like musicleft over from the night’s end wafting into the avenues before sleep.I remember once walking down Clinton Street, and singingthat line returning,

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Poetry Of Perseverance

      Aug 15, 2018

      The Poetry Of Perseverance
      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      What Living In A House Is Like

      May 1, 2022

      Standing in each stanza—no, I’m sorry—room. Standing in each room waslike standing in a tester stroke of wall paint. All these blobs of colors in rows and columns, the size of thumbs.Together—a portrait of potential. But blues leaped to yellow leaped

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      like a ghost ship in spacesomething see-through how the moon used to besomething impalpable untouchableor when you go to touch it your hand goes through itsomething haunted it takes something hauntedto haunt you like a lakelike a half a head of hair

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Yearning for Redemption

      Jul 26, 2024

      Yearning for Redemption
      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The multiverse of Sarah J. Maas

      Feb 17, 2024

      The multiverse of Sarah J. Maas
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      EDITOR’S Note

      Dec 15, 2021

      DURING A VIBRANT READING AND CONVERSATION AT THE 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center in November—among the first in-person poetry events at the venerable cultural center in New York City since the pandemic forced it to close its doors to the public nearly tw

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Seven Poems

      Sep 1, 2021

      The dancersIn a terribly brightLight blue gauzeRetained the mystery Skating on a lakeBlue and iceAn illusionary timeWhere poetry feels inevitable The terrific clownWho lies insideEvery blue dressDoes he see me Always a starAlways a rootHorrible auras

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Sarah Manguso Takes a Novel Approach

      Jan 10, 2022

      "Despite the fact that I’ve spent my entire career saying I would never write a novel, I realized this was the form I needed," Manguso says. The post Sarah Manguso Takes a Novel Approach appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Devil Asks Why You Would Mouth The Word Pity

      Jul 1, 2022

      even in this abundance of dark? Even in this abundance of dark you have totake the stars on faith. Look: Under today’s dim sky there is a basket.In that basket there is a fish. Come night, you are the animal that will eat the best parts of it. And ye

      1 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Owls and Other Fantasies

    4.5/5

    54 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      Mary Oliver's thoughts on the wild birds of Provincetown. She is a master of poetry.

    Book preview

    Owls and Other Fantasies - Mary Oliver

    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

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1