Dream Work: Poems

By Mary Oliver

Book Overview

"Dream Work is made up of poems that fulfill the demand of lyric poetry by being short, passionate, charged with emotion and its necessary companion, thought. . . . The music in Oliver's writing is unmistakable. . . . Dream Work is an outstanding book." --Los Angeles Times

In this collection of forty-five poems, originally published in 1986, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver turns her attention to the solitary and difficult labors of the spirit, the parallel awe and destruction that is nature, and the great wonder and struggle of being. Including some of her most well-known poems, such as "Wild Geese" and "The Journey," Dream Work demonstrates the remarkable depth of perceptural awareness that underlies much of Oliver's writing. An expressive exploration of the world and how one fits within it, Oliver's collection is a rich but unflinching meditation on how to exist amid the darkness while always, tirelessly, bending toward the light.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0593832671
• ISBN13: 9780593832677
• Release Date: May 2024
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.23 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 4.9" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

These poems are luminous and exquisite....

_Dream Work_ is the first Mary Oliver book that I found, way back in 1989 while ill with pneumonia. "The Journey", possibly Mary's most popular poem, leapt out at me and quite literally opened my mind to a deeper commitment to self-care. That poem was Good Medicine!! ... "Wild Geese" has been another balm; who among us couldn't feel more tender towards ourselves when we read these lines, "You do not have to be good./You do not have to walk on your knees/for a hunded miles through the desert, repenting./You only have to let the soft animal of your body/love what it loves."?

Excellent insight for people who've been in therapy

For those of us who have endured emotional illness, Mary Oliver really communicates the emotions and the hope. The first half of the book must have surely come from her own such experience. The second half of the book was much weaker in my opinion. She is definitely my all-time favorite poet. If I had to pick a favorite in the book it would be "Wild Geese" or "The Journey"