Unlock the Wonders of the Night Sky: Poetic and Prose Reflections on Owls and Other Fantasies

mtspace: The author uses observations of various bird species interacting with the natural world as a jumping-off spot to examine various aspects of our own inner lives. Her voice is quiet but strong, her observations vital and reaffirming.

I bought this soon after a friend told me her favorite poet was Mary Oliver. Now I understand why.

United States on Aug 28, 2023

Amazon Customer: A go to addition of seeing what the author has explored.

United States on Jul 21, 2023

Bee Durban: It is Mary Oliver and so will never not be worthy of 5 stars. Of course, this collection is stunning, but the opportunity to bask in Mary Oliver's love for birds is especially precious. Endless delights and opportunities to weep for the tenderness of it all.

United Kingdom on Jul 04, 2023

David Keymer: OLIVER, Mary. Dog Songs. Penguin. Knopf. 2013. 127p, bxw illus.
Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays. Beacon. 69p, bxw illus. 2003 .

Mary Oliver was a good –no, great!—nature poet— But both these books, though about nature, are throwaways, ephemera tossed out en route to writing the best, moist descriptive and evocative prose one could write, But it’s not these. The later book, Dog Sounds (2013) teeters on the edge of cloying. It’s not that the poems (all short) are bad but collectively they give off an air of perfume more than true feeling. Mary Oliver was the real thing but this book is not. I can’t recommend it to anyone, no matter how much you may love your dog pets. Owls is better but not good. There is a phenomenally good essay, “Bird,” about trying to save a damaged sea gull. If the rest of the book were as good as this one essay, the book would be a Gold Star item. ”Owls,’ selected for inclusion in the Best American Essays series, is good but doesn’t come close to, say, Ted Hughes killer poem Crow, about another seriously raptor animal, and its ferocity and existence outside any concept of human morality. Hughes doesn’t describe the...

United States on Jun 28, 2023

Lilly Barnes: The pleasure of deepening the relationship to anything she writes about.

Canada on May 26, 2023

Kristine E. Valencia: For a bird lover these poems and essays capture the ineffable joy of sharing the planet with these creatures.

United States on Mar 12, 2023

Generic Nomenclature: Mary Oliver writes about the American countryside and its nature. This collection rates highly alongside her other work. Her writing style is sparse but each sentence matters. I bought this collection because it included 'White owl flies into and out of the field': a brief poem about an owl making a kill in winter which then develops themes about life and death. The sort of thing you could read at a commemoration, perhaps. For me, her poems tend to be relatively short but powerful and haunting - or perhaps those are the ones that lure me in.

United Kingdom on Nov 19, 2018

gloria russell: Lovely, well written and illustrated throughout.

United Kingdom on Apr 09, 2018

Mark: Another compilation of poems and essays, including a handful of new ones, in this case all about birds. Oliver is simply amazing. She makes subjects you may not care about feel meaningful and inspiring and filled with, for lack of a better word from my atheist brain, grace. While all of the essays are short and powerful, I especially liked the one about caring for a crippled gull she found on the beach for three months one winter. She called him Bird: “He was, of course, a piece of the sky. His eyes said so. This is not fact, this is the other part of knowing something, when there is no proof, but neither is there any way toward disbelief. Imagine lifting the lid from a jar and finding it filled not with darkness but with light. Bird was like that. Startling, elegant, alive.” Of course, then he dies and rips your heart out. And here’s an excerpt from a poem flipped to at random, called “Catbird”: “Since I see him every morning, I have rewarded myself the pleasure of thinking that he knows me./ Yet never once has he answered my nod./ He seems, in fact, to find in me a kind of humor, I am so vast, uncertain and strange./ I am the one who comes and goes, and who knows...

United States on Nov 04, 2016

Tony: Some excellent bird poems and a brilliant essay on owls. I came across Mary Oliver's poetry when I went on a bird walk with a National Park Ranger in Tuolumne Meadows in California last summer. He read out The Dipper in the course of the walk and everybody was captivated by it. I simply cannot understand why she is not better known in Britain.

United Kingdom on Feb 07, 2015