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The Truro Bear and Other Adventures

Poems and Essays

Author Mary Oliver
$23.00 US
Beacon Press
30 per carton
On sale Oct 01, 2008 | 9780807068847
Sales rights: World
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From a poet who teaches us the beauty and magic of the natural world comes a reminder that this world includes "the creatures, with their / thick fur, their shy and wordless gaze. Their / infallible sense of what their lives / are meant to be."

In The Truro Bear and Other Adventures, Mary Oliver brings together ten new poems, thirty-five of her classic poems, and two essays, all about mammals, insects, and reptiles. The award-winning poet considers beasts of all kinds: bears, snakes, spiders, porcupines, humpback whales, hermit crabs, and, of course, her beloved and disobedient little dog, Percy, who appears and even speaks in thirteen poems, the closing section of this volume.

As Renée Loth has observed in the Boston Globe, "Mary Oliver, who won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 1983, is my choice for her joyous, accessible, intimate observations of the natural world . . . She teaches us the profound act of paying attention."

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day" (one of the poems in this volume)
Poems In This Volume
The Chance to Love Everything
The Gesture
Porcupine
Toad
One Hundred White-sided Dolphins on a Summer Day
The Kitten
Ghosts
Carrying the Snake to the Garden
The Opossum
This Is the One
At Herring Cove
Coyote in the Dark, Coyotes Remembered
Turtle
The Other Kingdoms
Swimming with Otter
Black Snake
Five A.M. in the Pinewoods
Humpbacks
Moles
The Snow Cricket
Whelks
A Meeting
The Gift
The Truro Bear
Alligator Poem
The Hermit Crab
Hannah’s Children
Pipefish
This Too
Swoon
How Turtles Come to Spend the Winter in the Aquarium, Then Are Flown South and Released Back Into the Sea
The Poet Goes to Indiana
The Summer Day
Oliver has the ability to transform everyday life events into something extraordinary. . . . [She shows us a natural world that is too often forgotten, in all its humor, grace and absolute loveliness.] —Emily Nicklin, Nature Conservancy

"Oliver, one of the country's most popular and highly awarded poets, presents . . . beautifully tempered lyrics celebrating the splendor of the living world . . . Oliver's signature tropes are as vital as ever-her beloved birds, dogs, snakes, and ocean are all summoned to capture the breathtaking glory of life." —Booklist

"The work of Mary Oliver is one of those rare and lovely convergences. She is a lyric artist with a riveted eye and an enormous heart, one of the nation's great spiritual sentinels."—Brian Doyle, Christian Century

"These poems sustain us rather than divert us. Although few poets have fewer human beings in their poems than Mary Oliver, it is ironic that few poets also go so far to help us forward."—Stephen Dobyns, New York Times Book Review

About

From a poet who teaches us the beauty and magic of the natural world comes a reminder that this world includes "the creatures, with their / thick fur, their shy and wordless gaze. Their / infallible sense of what their lives / are meant to be."

In The Truro Bear and Other Adventures, Mary Oliver brings together ten new poems, thirty-five of her classic poems, and two essays, all about mammals, insects, and reptiles. The award-winning poet considers beasts of all kinds: bears, snakes, spiders, porcupines, humpback whales, hermit crabs, and, of course, her beloved and disobedient little dog, Percy, who appears and even speaks in thirteen poems, the closing section of this volume.

As Renée Loth has observed in the Boston Globe, "Mary Oliver, who won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 1983, is my choice for her joyous, accessible, intimate observations of the natural world . . . She teaches us the profound act of paying attention."

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day" (one of the poems in this volume)

Table of Contents

Poems In This Volume
The Chance to Love Everything
The Gesture
Porcupine
Toad
One Hundred White-sided Dolphins on a Summer Day
The Kitten
Ghosts
Carrying the Snake to the Garden
The Opossum
This Is the One
At Herring Cove
Coyote in the Dark, Coyotes Remembered
Turtle
The Other Kingdoms
Swimming with Otter
Black Snake
Five A.M. in the Pinewoods
Humpbacks
Moles
The Snow Cricket
Whelks
A Meeting
The Gift
The Truro Bear
Alligator Poem
The Hermit Crab
Hannah’s Children
Pipefish
This Too
Swoon
How Turtles Come to Spend the Winter in the Aquarium, Then Are Flown South and Released Back Into the Sea
The Poet Goes to Indiana
The Summer Day

Praise

Oliver has the ability to transform everyday life events into something extraordinary. . . . [She shows us a natural world that is too often forgotten, in all its humor, grace and absolute loveliness.] —Emily Nicklin, Nature Conservancy

"Oliver, one of the country's most popular and highly awarded poets, presents . . . beautifully tempered lyrics celebrating the splendor of the living world . . . Oliver's signature tropes are as vital as ever-her beloved birds, dogs, snakes, and ocean are all summoned to capture the breathtaking glory of life." —Booklist

"The work of Mary Oliver is one of those rare and lovely convergences. She is a lyric artist with a riveted eye and an enormous heart, one of the nation's great spiritual sentinels."—Brian Doyle, Christian Century

"These poems sustain us rather than divert us. Although few poets have fewer human beings in their poems than Mary Oliver, it is ironic that few poets also go so far to help us forward."—Stephen Dobyns, New York Times Book Review

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