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  • Blue Pastures by Mary Oliver book cover
  • Blue Pastures by Mary Oliver book cover
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Blue Pastures

by Mary Oliver

Essays on the wild world and the writing life

Critically Recognized
$19.57 USD
$30.58 USD $19.57 USD
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Awards & Recognition

  • Author recognition

    Author Mary Oliver is a Pulitzer Prize winner

    The metadata describes Mary Oliver as a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet; this is an accolade for the author, not for...

  • Critical praise

    Praised by Library Journal

    Library Journal praises the collection as Oliver's joyful sharing of her love of her craft.

AlbakiReads Editorial

Essays on the wild world and the writing life

Blue Pastures brings together fifteen prose pieces in which Mary Oliver considers nature, writing, solitude, and the people around her. The collection also turns to literary influence, including Walt Whitman, and reflects on how to notice the extraordinary in the everyday world. Oliver describes the essays as shaped by her passions for the natural world, literature, and human connection, while acknowledging both joy and despair. Together, these subjects make the book a compact gathering of observations about creative practice and attention to the world beyond the self.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in essays about nature and the natural world
  • Readers curious about a poet’s reflections on writing and literary influence
  • Readers who enjoy prose exploring solitude and human connection

Themes

Nature and attentionWriting and literary influenceSolitudeHuman connectionJoy and despair

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

Blue Pastures collects fifteen prose works from Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning poet Mary Oliver.

"This transcendent collection is Oliver's joyful sharing of her love of her craft."--Library Journal

With consummate craftsmanship, Mary Oliver has fashioned fifteen luminous prose pieces: on nature, writing, and herself and those around her. She praises Whitman, denounces cuteness, notes where to find the extraordinary, and extols solitude. Nature speaks to her and she speaks to nature.

"This book is biased, opinionated; also it is also joyful, and probably there is despair here too...But the reader will find the pleasures more certain, and more constant, than the rills of despond. Thus it has turned out in my life thus far, influenced by the sustaining passions: love of the wild world, love of literature, love for and from another person." -Mary Oliver


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Customer reviews

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Malaika Taylor

I highly recommend to for anyone looking for inner clarity

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Thomas DiMassa

Great service and fast service

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Ella

Great shopping experience! The book arrived quickly, was well packaged, and matched the description perfectly. I would definitely shop with you again

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Olivia

Smooth.