Book Description
Now in paperback--the best-selling collection of poems by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Leaf and the Cloud. "Mary Oliver's poetry is fine and deep; it reads like a blessing," wrote Stanley Kunitz many years ago; and recently, Rita Dove described her last volume, The Leaf and the Cloud, as "a brilliant meditation." For the many admirers of Mary Oliver's dazzling poetry and luminous vision, as well as for those who may be coming to her work for the first time, What Do We Know will be a revelation. These forty poems--of observing, of searching, of pausing, of astonishment, of giving thanks--embrace in every sense the natural world, its unrepeatable moments and its ceaseless cycles. Mary Oliver evokes unforgettable images--from one hundred white-sided dolphins on a summer day to bees that have memorized every stalk and leaf in a field--even as she reminds us, after Emerson, that "the invisible and imponderable is the sole fact."


About the Author
Mary Oliver is the author of more than ten volumes of poetry and prose, including American Primitive, New and Selected Poems, House of Light, A Poetry Handbook, West Wind, Rules for the Dance, Winter Hours, The Leaf and the Cloud, which was both a Boston Globe and a Book Sense best seller. Her many accolades include the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Lannan Literary Award; in 1999 she received the New England Book Award for Literary Excellence from the New England Booksellers Association. Mary Oliver lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Now in paperback—the best-selling collection of poems by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Leaf and the Cloud.

"Mary Oliver's poetry is fine and deep; it reads like a blessing," wrote Stanley Kunitz many years ago; and recently, Rita Dove described her last volume, The Leaf and the Cloud, as "a brilliant meditation." For the many admirers of Mary Oliver's dazzling poetry and luminous vision, as well as for those who may be coming to her work for the first time, What Do We Know will be a revelation. These forty poems—of observing, of searching, of pausing, of astonishment, of giving thanks—embrace in every sense the natural world, its unrepeatable moments and its ceaseless cycles. Mary Oliver evokes unforgettable images—from one hundred white-sided dolphins on a summer day to bees that have memorized every stalk and leaf in a field—even as she reminds us, after Emerson, that "the invisible and imponderable is the sole fact."