Dream Work E-Book

Mary Oliver

• Herausgeber: Grove Press UK
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 40

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Dream Work, a collection of forty-five poems originally published in 1986, follows both chronologically and logically Mary Oliver's American Primitive, which won her the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1983. The depth and diversity of perceptual awareness, so steadfast and radiant in American Primitive, continues in Dream Work. Additionally, she has turned her attention in these poems to the solitary and difficult labours of the spirit, to accepting the truth about one's personal world, and to valuing the triumphs while transcending the failures of human relationships.

Leseprobe

SELECT TITLESALSO BY MARY OLIVER

POETRY

American Primitive

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

Upstream

First published in the United Kingdom in 2025 by Grove Press UK, an imprint of Grove Atlantic

First published in the United States of America in 1986 by Grove Atlantic

Copyright © 1986 by NW Orchard LLC

The moral right of Mary Oliver to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

No part of this book may be used in any manner in the learning, training or development of generative artificial intelligence technologies (including but not limited to machine learning models and large language models (LLMs)), whether by data scraping, data mining or use in any way to create or form a part of data sets or in any other way.

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN 978 1 80471 093 7

E-book ISBN 978 1 80471 094 4

Printed in Great Britain

Grove Press UK

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.groveatlantic.com

CONTENTS

Part I

DOGFISH

MORNING POEM

THE CHANCE TO LOVE EVERYTHING

TRILLIUMS

RAGE

WILD GEESE

KNIFE

SHADOWS

DREAMS

THE RIVER

CONSEQUENCES

ROBERT SCHUMANN

CLAMMING

THE FIRE

BANYAN

WHISPERS

DRIVING THROUGH THE WIND RIVER RESERVATION: A POEM OF BLACK BEAR

MEMBERS OF THE TRIBE

STARFISH

THE JOURNEY

A VISITOR

THE HOUSE

STANLEY KUNITZ

Part II

ORION

ONE OR TWO THINGS

POEM

MARSH HAWKS

BOWING TO THE EMPRESS

THE TURTLE

SUNRISE

TWO KINDS OF DELIVERANCE

THE SWIMMER

MILKWEED

THE WAVES

LANDSCAPE

THE SHARK

STORM IN MASSACHUSETTS, SEPTEMBER 1982

ACID

BLACK SNAKES

THE MOTHS

AT SEA

1945–1985: POEM FOR THE ANNIVERSARY

AT LOXAHATCHIE

COMING HOME

THE SUNFLOWERS

Acknowledgments

I.

Dogfish

Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing

kept flickering in with the tide

and looking around.

Black as a fisherman’s boot,

with a white belly.

If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile

under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin,

which was rough

as a thousand sharpened nails.

And you know

what a smile means,

don’t you?

I wanted

the past to go away, I wanted

to leave it, like another country; I wanted

my life to close, and open

like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song

where it falls

down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;

I wanted

to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,

whoever I was, I was

alive

for a little while.

It was evening, and no longer summer.

Three small fish, I don’t know what they were,

huddled in the highest ripples

as it came swimming in again, effortless, the whole body

one gesture, one black sleeve

that could fit easily around

the bodies of three small fish.

Also I wanted

to be able to love. And we all know

how that one goes,

don’t we?

Slowly

the dogfish tore open the soft basins of water.

You don’t want to hear the story

of my life, and anyway

I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it’s the same old story—

a few people just trying,

one way or another,

to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.

And nobody, of course, is kind,

or mean,

for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to

swim through the fires to stay in

this world.

And look! look! look! I think those little fish

better wake up and dash themselves away

from the hopeless future that is

bulging toward them.

And probably,

if they don’t waste time

looking for an easier world,

they can do it.

Morning Poem

Every morning

the world

is created.

Under the orange

sticks of the sun

the heaped

ashes of the night

turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches—

and the ponds appear

like black cloth

on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.

If it is your nature

to be happy

you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination

alighting everywhere.

And if your spirit

carries within it

the thorn

that is heavier than lead—

if it’s all you can do

to keep on trudging—

there is still

somewhere deep within you

a beast shouting that the earth