Upstream
Mary Oliver · 2016
Oliver's essays extend her poetry: meditations on attention, the natural world, the practice of paying attention as spiritual discipline. "Instructions for living a life: / Pay attention. / Be astonished. / Tell about it." The most accessible introduction to the nature essay.
The case against
Half of these essays appeared in earlier collections, and the literary appreciations of Poe and Whitman read like devotional book reports beside the nature pieces. Oliver has one register, astonishment, and prose exposes its limits in a way a short poem never does. Lovely in sips. Cloying by the cupful.
Essays · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
