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A review by billyjepma
Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver by Mary Oliver
5.0
Reading this ~500 page collection was like an odyssey. I started reading it just as the 2020 pandemic was forcing us into quarantine, and have continued to read it, depart from it from a stretch, and then return to it like an old friend when I’ve needed the distinct and meditative comfort only Mary Oliver can offer.
I’ve read these poems through a move from one home into another, through the unexpected experience of falling in love, through ongoing crises that have wracked the world as I’ve been taught to know it.
There are so many poems in here to love and live by, so much insight and joy, sadness and longing, hope and exultation. Reading Mary Oliver feels like prayer; sometimes it’s an agnostic prayer and other times it’s fiercely religious prayer. It’s an undertaking to take on a collection of this size, but it’s exactly the kind of explorative journey my mind and spirit needed in 2020.
I’ve read these poems through a move from one home into another, through the unexpected experience of falling in love, through ongoing crises that have wracked the world as I’ve been taught to know it.
There are so many poems in here to love and live by, so much insight and joy, sadness and longing, hope and exultation. Reading Mary Oliver feels like prayer; sometimes it’s an agnostic prayer and other times it’s fiercely religious prayer. It’s an undertaking to take on a collection of this size, but it’s exactly the kind of explorative journey my mind and spirit needed in 2020.