Mary Oliver

'Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?' One of America's best loved poets, Mary Oliver is also among nature's most brilliant and devoted observers, whose words ask us to live with our eyes open wider. This luminous selection brings together her best-known works from across her career. 'Oliver's poems are … as genuine, moving, and implausible as the first caressing breeze of spring' New York Times Book Review 'Mary Oliver's poetry is fine and deep; it reads like a blessing' Stanley Kunitz 'Just a few seemingly simple phrases perfectly express what we need to know just then, in that moment' Oprah Winfrey 'It doesn't feel like you have to take a seminar in order to understand Mary Oliver's poetry. She's speaking directly to you as a human being' Ruth Franklin, The New Yorker

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? -Mary Oliver, from "The Summer Day" Throughout her celebrated career, Mary Oliver touched countless readers with her brilliantly crafted verse, expounding on her love for the physical world and the powerful bonds between all living things. Arranged by Oliver herself shortly before her death in 2019, Devotions features Oliver's work from her very first book of poetry, No Voyage and Other Poems, published in 1963 at the age of twenty-eight, through her last, Felicity, published in 2015. This timeless volume showcases the beloved poet at her edifying best. Within these pages, she provides us with an extraordinary and invaluable collection of her passionate, perceptive, and much-treasured observations of the natural world.