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Thirst: Poems
Thirst, a collection of fortythree new poems from Pulitzer Prizewinner Mary Oliver, introduces two new directions in the poet's work. Grappling with grief at the death of her beloved partner of over forty years, she strives to experience sorrow as a path to spiritual progress, grief as part of loving and not its end. And within these pages she chronicles for the frst time her discovery of faith, without abandoning the love of the physical world that has been a hallmark of her work for four decades.
88 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
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About the author
Mary Oliver
102Ìýbooks8,198ÌýfollowersMary Jane Oliver was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her work is inspired by nature, rather than the human world, stemming from her lifelong passion for solitary walks in the wild.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ database with this name. .
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ database with this name. .
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 763 reviews
December 31, 2019
I bought this as soon as I’d dried my tears from reading one of the poems Laysee included in her review:
"I remember love, that leaves yet never leaves."
After reading the whole collection, The Uses of Sorrow remains my favourite, but Oliver's journey through bereavement, finding joy in the beauty of the natural world, and questioning and searching for faith was a helpful, hopeful lens to view the dark world I currently inhabit. Helpful, even though faith and bereavement are decades apart for me, and I have no urge to try again to find faith.
Popularity
The poems vary in style and length, but all use fairly plain language to explore profound themes in insightful, beautiful, and relatable ways.
It’s easy to see why Oliver is so popular: she’s not a “difficult� poet. But don’t assume that accessibility means trivial or lightweight. There is depth and beauty in abundance, and creating that from plain ingredients is perhaps more of an achievement than that of more “literary� poets, using archaic words, and symbolism now lost to us.
Context
Oliver wrote these poems after the death of her partner of more than 40 years, photographer Molly Malone Cook. The beautiful sepia cover photo is “Paradise Road, Dayton, Alabama�, by MMC. A misty, tree-lined route towards watery light.
It continues with a friend telling her “It’s not the weight you carry, but how you carry it.�
There’s an excellent article about Oliver and Malone on Brainpickings.org. It includes the observation that “they shaped each other’s way of seeing and being with the world�
More Mary Oliver
Another poem of hers I’ve come to love, but which is not in this collection, is the one below, especially the lines I’ve emboldened:
Image: Wild geese (.)
You can hear Mary Oliver reading Wild Geese . The poem itself starts ~30 seconds in.
The Uses of Sorrow
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
"I remember love, that leaves yet never leaves."
After reading the whole collection, The Uses of Sorrow remains my favourite, but Oliver's journey through bereavement, finding joy in the beauty of the natural world, and questioning and searching for faith was a helpful, hopeful lens to view the dark world I currently inhabit. Helpful, even though faith and bereavement are decades apart for me, and I have no urge to try again to find faith.
Popularity
The poems vary in style and length, but all use fairly plain language to explore profound themes in insightful, beautiful, and relatable ways.
It’s easy to see why Oliver is so popular: she’s not a “difficult� poet. But don’t assume that accessibility means trivial or lightweight. There is depth and beauty in abundance, and creating that from plain ingredients is perhaps more of an achievement than that of more “literary� poets, using archaic words, and symbolism now lost to us.
Context
Oliver wrote these poems after the death of her partner of more than 40 years, photographer Molly Malone Cook. The beautiful sepia cover photo is “Paradise Road, Dayton, Alabama�, by MMC. A misty, tree-lined route towards watery light.
Heavy
That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying
I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had His hand in this,
as well as friends.
It continues with a friend telling her “It’s not the weight you carry, but how you carry it.�
There’s an excellent article about Oliver and Malone on Brainpickings.org. It includes the observation that “they shaped each other’s way of seeing and being with the world�
More Mary Oliver
Another poem of hers I’ve come to love, but which is not in this collection, is the one below, especially the lines I’ve emboldened:
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Image: Wild geese (.)
You can hear Mary Oliver reading Wild Geese . The poem itself starts ~30 seconds in.
February 4, 2019
I had not yet read this later collection, and decided to read it because its author, Mary Oliver, recently died, which led for me to a kind of grieving. This book was written more than ten years ago after her long time partner, Molly Malone Clark, died, so I thought it might provide some interesting (and useful) symmetry: How can those of us readers best mourn Oliver’s (or anyone’s) loss? Oliver was one of the best known poets of the last fifty years; she’s one of our greatest advocates for poetry and living the poetic life, the life of language, of close observation of daily life, of nature and the heart.
Oliver’s principal theme here is how she is learning to live with grief. Both she and Clark were private people, so this collection is less about Clark or her relationship with her partner of more than forty years than about how to deal with her loss. But the revelation in this book is that the woman whose ecstatic spirituality we have for decades associated most closely with nature now turns more explicitly than ever before in her poetry to her Christian faith. Nature is still a source of sustenance, but she makes it clear now that she sees the natural world through her faith. Most of the simple poems here I like less than earlier collections, but some of them are still remarkable.
In "On Thy Wondrous Works I Will Meditate," one of the best poems here, she makes a meditation on the 145th Psalm, working her way through bewilderment and anguish back to belief. But it’s less about the "hope of heaven" than to enter “the other kingdom: grace, and imagination, / and the multiple sympathies." "My work is loving the world," Oliver tells us, in the very first line of this collection. This is what she has always done, but now she makes it clear that the work of loving that world is connected to her faith.
I also really liked “Gethsemane,� which focuses on the sleeping guards outside Jesus’s tomb:
The grass never sleeps.
Or the roses.
Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning.
Probably the most cited/favorite poem from this collection is this one:
The Uses of Sorrow
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
But here’s another on the uses of grief:
Heavy
That time
I thought I could not
Go any closer to grief
Without dying
I went closer
And I did not die.
Surely God
Has his hand in this.
If you want to know more about Mary Oliver and read some more of her poetry, this is her at the Poetry Foundation site:
Oliver’s principal theme here is how she is learning to live with grief. Both she and Clark were private people, so this collection is less about Clark or her relationship with her partner of more than forty years than about how to deal with her loss. But the revelation in this book is that the woman whose ecstatic spirituality we have for decades associated most closely with nature now turns more explicitly than ever before in her poetry to her Christian faith. Nature is still a source of sustenance, but she makes it clear now that she sees the natural world through her faith. Most of the simple poems here I like less than earlier collections, but some of them are still remarkable.
In "On Thy Wondrous Works I Will Meditate," one of the best poems here, she makes a meditation on the 145th Psalm, working her way through bewilderment and anguish back to belief. But it’s less about the "hope of heaven" than to enter “the other kingdom: grace, and imagination, / and the multiple sympathies." "My work is loving the world," Oliver tells us, in the very first line of this collection. This is what she has always done, but now she makes it clear that the work of loving that world is connected to her faith.
I also really liked “Gethsemane,� which focuses on the sleeping guards outside Jesus’s tomb:
The grass never sleeps.
Or the roses.
Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning.
Probably the most cited/favorite poem from this collection is this one:
The Uses of Sorrow
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
But here’s another on the uses of grief:
Heavy
That time
I thought I could not
Go any closer to grief
Without dying
I went closer
And I did not die.
Surely God
Has his hand in this.
If you want to know more about Mary Oliver and read some more of her poetry, this is her at the Poetry Foundation site:
October 20, 2020
*One line review:
She just wrapped the earth in her arms and released it dressed in calm and serene.
*My favourite:
'A Note Left on the Door
There are these: the blue
skirts of the ocean walking in now, almost
to the edge of town,
and a thousand birds, in their incredible wings
which they think nothing of, crying out
that the day is long, the fish are plentiful.
And friends, being as kind as friends can be,
striving to lift the darkness.
Forgive me, Lord of honeysuckle, of trees,
of notebooks, of typewriters, of music,
that there are also these:
the lover, the singer, the poet
asleep in the shadows.'
She just wrapped the earth in her arms and released it dressed in calm and serene.
*My favourite:
'A Note Left on the Door
There are these: the blue
skirts of the ocean walking in now, almost
to the edge of town,
and a thousand birds, in their incredible wings
which they think nothing of, crying out
that the day is long, the fish are plentiful.
And friends, being as kind as friends can be,
striving to lift the darkness.
Forgive me, Lord of honeysuckle, of trees,
of notebooks, of typewriters, of music,
that there are also these:
the lover, the singer, the poet
asleep in the shadows.'
January 5, 2009
Live long enough, live deep enough, and you will find, as Mary Oliver does in these 43 poems collected in "Thirst," that all grief edges joy, all joy is edged by grief. It is only in a deep and courageous immersion into life, and perhaps also that place beyond life, that one can fully experience this wonder, a kind of yin and yang, the light beside the shadow, phenomenon that is living with thirst, quenched or unquenched.
There is nothing pretentious about Oliver's poetry. She is simplicity and purity itself. Thirst is how she approaches living, and now dying - in her expression of grief for the loss of her longtime life partner. This does not change how she approaches living, only intensifies it. "My work is loving the world," she writes in her opening poem, "Messenger." She observes the world, then observes herself in it, part and parcel. "Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums./Here the clam deep in the speckled sand./Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?/Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me/keep my mind on what matters,/which is my work,/which is mostly standing still and learning to be/astonished."
Much of this collection is Oliver's conversation with God having a conversation with her. Their dialogue is filtered by nature, where everyplace is a place of worship and every living thing ministering to her and she reciprocating. Her dogs speak of unconditional love and simple acceptance, an exchanged gaze with a snake is looking into the eyes of divinity (and not the darker side). Praying can be done through the weeds in a vacant lot. The words do not have to be elaborate, Oliver writes, "but a doorway/into thanks, and a silence in which/another voice may speak." This same sentiment is echoed with utmost simplicity in the poem, "The Uses of Sorrow" - that a box full of darkness given to her by another can also be a gift, a richer blessing.
When you think you cannot go closer, or dive deeper, or come up into brighter light, as Oliver writes in her poetry - you can. Just when you think Oliver cannot elicit more beauty out of the everyday word - she does. We thirst for more.
There is nothing pretentious about Oliver's poetry. She is simplicity and purity itself. Thirst is how she approaches living, and now dying - in her expression of grief for the loss of her longtime life partner. This does not change how she approaches living, only intensifies it. "My work is loving the world," she writes in her opening poem, "Messenger." She observes the world, then observes herself in it, part and parcel. "Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums./Here the clam deep in the speckled sand./Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?/Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me/keep my mind on what matters,/which is my work,/which is mostly standing still and learning to be/astonished."
Much of this collection is Oliver's conversation with God having a conversation with her. Their dialogue is filtered by nature, where everyplace is a place of worship and every living thing ministering to her and she reciprocating. Her dogs speak of unconditional love and simple acceptance, an exchanged gaze with a snake is looking into the eyes of divinity (and not the darker side). Praying can be done through the weeds in a vacant lot. The words do not have to be elaborate, Oliver writes, "but a doorway/into thanks, and a silence in which/another voice may speak." This same sentiment is echoed with utmost simplicity in the poem, "The Uses of Sorrow" - that a box full of darkness given to her by another can also be a gift, a richer blessing.
When you think you cannot go closer, or dive deeper, or come up into brighter light, as Oliver writes in her poetry - you can. Just when you think Oliver cannot elicit more beauty out of the everyday word - she does. We thirst for more.
February 21, 2019
I read this over the "Weekend of Three Books," as I'll remember it, at a Bed & Breakfast that might just as easily be called a Bed & Books. You know: Window seat, sea views, book, walks by the winter sea. Repeat. Especially window seat, sea views, book.
I've read some good Oliver poems about nature, but this collection was in obvious reaction to her lifelong partner's death. I'm no atheist, but I thought the presence of God and Jesus dragged a lot of these poems down. Not that religious allusions are bad for poetry. Not at all. But handle with care, for sure.
Some poems, too, came across as the type an unknown poet would get rejected for in 50 different journals (this is hyperbole, actually, as it would take a sum total of 50 years to collect all those rejections, given the speed of poetry journal responses). The famous, in most any field of the arts, can get away with a lot more than the unknown because editors are not always above trading in on a name, especially if it sells a few journals and ups the journal's "look-at-me" visibility.
That said, some poems were good here, too. But the religion and the "Really?" entries made me wonder what the best Oliver collection is out there. I'm more than sure it's not this one.
I've read some good Oliver poems about nature, but this collection was in obvious reaction to her lifelong partner's death. I'm no atheist, but I thought the presence of God and Jesus dragged a lot of these poems down. Not that religious allusions are bad for poetry. Not at all. But handle with care, for sure.
Some poems, too, came across as the type an unknown poet would get rejected for in 50 different journals (this is hyperbole, actually, as it would take a sum total of 50 years to collect all those rejections, given the speed of poetry journal responses). The famous, in most any field of the arts, can get away with a lot more than the unknown because editors are not always above trading in on a name, especially if it sells a few journals and ups the journal's "look-at-me" visibility.
That said, some poems were good here, too. But the religion and the "Really?" entries made me wonder what the best Oliver collection is out there. I'm more than sure it's not this one.
January 18, 2019
Reposting in honor of Mary Oliver who died on Jan 17, 2019. I will miss her beautiful poetry. RIP, Mary Oliver.
“Thirst" is a very fine collection of forty-three poems published in 2006.
Mary Oliver's poems exude an elegance that represented an outflow of her intimate communion with nature. Her lines about the trees, roses, hummingbirds, her dog, and all kinds of living creatures inspire a fresh appreciation of the natural world we tend to gloss over in our hurried lives. Often I linger over a poem and think there is no better way to extol the beauty of creation. The lines are breathtakingly beautiful.
The poems were written after Oliver lost her partner of over forty years. In it were poems where companionship was found in sharing "the hurtless gossips of the day" and grief was a part of loving. There was a poem about unrequited love, which I particularly enjoyed. It felt so close to experience in its recognition of the heart's need to protect itself from unnecessary bruising and to preserve its dignity and self-respect.
"In matters of love
of this kind
there are things we long to do
but must not do."
Other poems like "The Uses of Sorrow" carry a punch in a mere four lines - a crystallisation of insight.
There are some deeply moving spiritual poems in which her adoration of God is inextricably and understandably intertwined with the extravagant richness that is in nature.
Mary Oliver, the poet, is for me a very new and precious discovery. What bliss!
“Thirst" is a very fine collection of forty-three poems published in 2006.
Mary Oliver's poems exude an elegance that represented an outflow of her intimate communion with nature. Her lines about the trees, roses, hummingbirds, her dog, and all kinds of living creatures inspire a fresh appreciation of the natural world we tend to gloss over in our hurried lives. Often I linger over a poem and think there is no better way to extol the beauty of creation. The lines are breathtakingly beautiful.
The poems were written after Oliver lost her partner of over forty years. In it were poems where companionship was found in sharing "the hurtless gossips of the day" and grief was a part of loving. There was a poem about unrequited love, which I particularly enjoyed. It felt so close to experience in its recognition of the heart's need to protect itself from unnecessary bruising and to preserve its dignity and self-respect.
"In matters of love
of this kind
there are things we long to do
but must not do."
Other poems like "The Uses of Sorrow" carry a punch in a mere four lines - a crystallisation of insight.
There are some deeply moving spiritual poems in which her adoration of God is inextricably and understandably intertwined with the extravagant richness that is in nature.
Mary Oliver, the poet, is for me a very new and precious discovery. What bliss!
Read
July 8, 2021it feels like a hug, and it is perfect
May 19, 2019
A Pretty Song
From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, no coming out of it.
Which is the only way to love, isn't it?
This isn't a playground, this is
earth, our heaven, for awhile.
Therefore I have given precedence
to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods
that hold you in the center of my world.
And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.
And I say to my heart: rave on.
From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, no coming out of it.
Which is the only way to love, isn't it?
This isn't a playground, this is
earth, our heaven, for awhile.
Therefore I have given precedence
to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods
that hold you in the center of my world.
And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.
And I say to my heart: rave on.
June 2, 2012
The Uses of Sorrow
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
Read
February 11, 2019"That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying
I went closer,
and I did not die.�
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying
I went closer,
and I did not die.�
March 28, 2025
3.75
Poems on grief, pain, embracing all aspects of the human experience. Nevertheless it wouldn’t be Mary Oliver if she didn’t provide you with a glass half full perspective through nature.
“There are days
when the sun goes down
like a fist�
Behold, how the fist opens
with invitation.�
Poems on grief, pain, embracing all aspects of the human experience. Nevertheless it wouldn’t be Mary Oliver if she didn’t provide you with a glass half full perspective through nature.
“There are days
when the sun goes down
like a fist�
Behold, how the fist opens
with invitation.�
June 8, 2011
I like Mary Oliver, and I'm not going to stop liking her just because I liked Thirst less than American Primitive and House of Light. I have read a lot in Dream Work, too, and will probably read the whole thing through this summer, so I get a sense of her again.
In Thirst, I respect the grief and the reverence for nature and nature's beauty, but the God thing feels too pointed to me. And I don't really mind when poets do their God thing--Lucia Perillo, Andrew Hudgins--it's their thing, their material. Perhaps it was always present in her work and is naturally more her focus now.
I should give an example...open book randomly and find "The Vast Ocean Begins Just Outside Our Church: The Eucharist," which begins:
Something has happened
to the bread
and the wine.
They have been blessed.
What now?
I don't even mind the simplicity of this, as I tend to admire simplicity of language for complexity of thought, but I sense the words are simply going to make the same claim made many times before:
They are something else now
from what they were
before this began.
And, yes, there it is. Oddly, though I resist this, I like the wonderful unsupported claims she makes about animals--a dog taking pleasure in the beauty of sunsets, a snake looking her in the eyes. And she lets the roses speak! Louise Gluck spoke through flowers, too, but Oliver puts what they say not into persona poems but in quotation marks, "Listen," say the roses
"the heart-shackles are not, as you think,
death, illness, pain,
unrequited hope, not loneliness, but
lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety,
selfishness."
This made me look up "lassitude" which I feared was laziness, but it is weariness...weariness unto apathy.
I guess in the animal poems and with the roses speaking, it is clear we are in fable, in imagination. In the God poems, it is not clear to me whether myth and the imagination enter in, or just a firm restatement of religious claim, fortified by hope, faith, and belief.
I go back to American Primitive. It's got vultures in it! And a cyclops kitten.
It's true, Jesus was there in earlier books, in "Maybe" from House of Light: "Sweet Jesus, talking / his melancholy madness, / stood up in the boat / and the say lay down, // silky and sorry." But here it is clear a story is being told, Jesus a character in it, as is the sea! I glean a truth from the imaginative and fabulous details.
In Thirst, I feel I am being told the way it is, and that it is only one way. This prevented my deep pleasure and deepest belief in the poems themselves.
In Thirst, I respect the grief and the reverence for nature and nature's beauty, but the God thing feels too pointed to me. And I don't really mind when poets do their God thing--Lucia Perillo, Andrew Hudgins--it's their thing, their material. Perhaps it was always present in her work and is naturally more her focus now.
I should give an example...open book randomly and find "The Vast Ocean Begins Just Outside Our Church: The Eucharist," which begins:
Something has happened
to the bread
and the wine.
They have been blessed.
What now?
I don't even mind the simplicity of this, as I tend to admire simplicity of language for complexity of thought, but I sense the words are simply going to make the same claim made many times before:
They are something else now
from what they were
before this began.
And, yes, there it is. Oddly, though I resist this, I like the wonderful unsupported claims she makes about animals--a dog taking pleasure in the beauty of sunsets, a snake looking her in the eyes. And she lets the roses speak! Louise Gluck spoke through flowers, too, but Oliver puts what they say not into persona poems but in quotation marks, "Listen," say the roses
"the heart-shackles are not, as you think,
death, illness, pain,
unrequited hope, not loneliness, but
lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety,
selfishness."
This made me look up "lassitude" which I feared was laziness, but it is weariness...weariness unto apathy.
I guess in the animal poems and with the roses speaking, it is clear we are in fable, in imagination. In the God poems, it is not clear to me whether myth and the imagination enter in, or just a firm restatement of religious claim, fortified by hope, faith, and belief.
I go back to American Primitive. It's got vultures in it! And a cyclops kitten.
It's true, Jesus was there in earlier books, in "Maybe" from House of Light: "Sweet Jesus, talking / his melancholy madness, / stood up in the boat / and the say lay down, // silky and sorry." But here it is clear a story is being told, Jesus a character in it, as is the sea! I glean a truth from the imaginative and fabulous details.
In Thirst, I feel I am being told the way it is, and that it is only one way. This prevented my deep pleasure and deepest belief in the poems themselves.
Read
November 7, 2024mary oliver wrote, “the only prayers I know are poems.� that’s how her writing feels to me.
August 17, 2016
“When I first found you I was
filled with light, now the darkness grows
and it is filled with crooked things, bitter
and weak, each one bearing my name.�
I must start by saying that I believe the title of this collection of poems is beyond appropriate. Thirst is a tree of forty three branches seeking answers from a sky they know to be everlastingly out of reach.
Mary Oliver is painfully aware that one backward step after one step forward won’t bring you to where you were before. Even if taken with exceptional precision, there is absolutely no way back. We crave the moment in its infinitude, not in its physicality or geographical capacity.
She is moving. You can tell that she is trying not to stop, not to have a break for a breath become eternity. Sometimes blindly, other times looking back over her shoulder, she is carrying on. Some of the doors that were before wide open to everything now hide walls of bricks behind, though. She bumps into them, into accidental revelations that impel her step. There is no wrong path, just path.
Even though I must confess that I did not enjoy some of her more religious poems as much as the others, I understand, and respect, their existence.
Going through Mary Oliver’s body of work, back and forth in time, is an incredible experience. It’s remarkable how you can feel her reaching out, further and further, into the universe. It’s amazing how you can feel her changing, sometimes subtly, other times rather brusquely, even if always kindheartedly. She has filled my year with beauty, leading me through a spectrum of emotions that seem to have awoken me in more ways than one. I couldn’t be more grateful for her existence.
“Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.�
September 5, 2020
Glorious ! !
I loved so many poems of this book.
Gethsemane
The grass never sleeps.
Or the roses.
Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until
morning.
Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept.
The cricket has such splendid fringe on its feet,
and it sings, have you noticed, with its whole body,
and heaven knows if it ever sleeps.
Percy (Six)
You’re like a little wild thing
that was never sent to school.
Sit, I say, and you jump up.
Come, I say, and you go galloping down the sand
to the nearest dead fish
with which you perfume your sweet neck.
It is summer.
How many summers does a little dog have?
I loved so many poems of this book.
Gethsemane
The grass never sleeps.
Or the roses.
Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until
morning.
Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept.
The cricket has such splendid fringe on its feet,
and it sings, have you noticed, with its whole body,
and heaven knows if it ever sleeps.
Percy (Six)
You’re like a little wild thing
that was never sent to school.
Sit, I say, and you jump up.
Come, I say, and you go galloping down the sand
to the nearest dead fish
with which you perfume your sweet neck.
It is summer.
How many summers does a little dog have?
July 9, 2021
This book felt a lot like a hug. Or like a breath of fresh air. Or like a cool spring day. It felt almost like I was sitting in the grass, across from Mary Oliver herself, listening to her speak about the birds and the deer and the clouds and the trees. She has this brilliant way of bringing simple moments to life on a page. I love it.
In the midst of the million textbooks that I am reading right now for grad school - this book was exactly what I needed in every single way. Each time I flipped a page of this book I felt like I could take a deeeeeep breath (flipping the pages of a textbook does not feel like that hahaha)
I will be coming back to these poems forever - it feels like there will always be something new within them to uncover.
In the midst of the million textbooks that I am reading right now for grad school - this book was exactly what I needed in every single way. Each time I flipped a page of this book I felt like I could take a deeeeeep breath (flipping the pages of a textbook does not feel like that hahaha)
I will be coming back to these poems forever - it feels like there will always be something new within them to uncover.
February 28, 2023
2023 Review:
Reading in a volume of poetry in a cathedral is peak vibes. Highly recommend.
This time around so many of the same lines were resonant: the wild child watching the stars being wiped away; the church that could not tame and therefore would not keep; the beloved waiting to hear the hurtless gossips of the day; the man who had eaten the dark hours and come out the other side just as kind as before.
2022 Review:
Years ago I read a book about the theology of enjoyment that was very correct and reformed and made enjoyment sound like a bottle of flat soda. Mary Oliver's poems teach this theology exponentially better because they simply show the act of enjoying with a deep sense of passion. Oliver takes my breath away, makes me laugh and wonder, and her poetry fills in gaps of reformed theology that (in the words of Lewis's "Meditations in a Toolshed") tend to look at the world (analyzing) instead of looking along it (experiencing). I will treasure and re-read her so many times. In the midst of her wonder and delight are also some incredibly profound lines on grief, loss, and wrestling with the church that are well worth pondering.
Reading in a volume of poetry in a cathedral is peak vibes. Highly recommend.
This time around so many of the same lines were resonant: the wild child watching the stars being wiped away; the church that could not tame and therefore would not keep; the beloved waiting to hear the hurtless gossips of the day; the man who had eaten the dark hours and come out the other side just as kind as before.
2022 Review:
Years ago I read a book about the theology of enjoyment that was very correct and reformed and made enjoyment sound like a bottle of flat soda. Mary Oliver's poems teach this theology exponentially better because they simply show the act of enjoying with a deep sense of passion. Oliver takes my breath away, makes me laugh and wonder, and her poetry fills in gaps of reformed theology that (in the words of Lewis's "Meditations in a Toolshed") tend to look at the world (analyzing) instead of looking along it (experiencing). I will treasure and re-read her so many times. In the midst of her wonder and delight are also some incredibly profound lines on grief, loss, and wrestling with the church that are well worth pondering.
November 22, 2023
acabo de ver que se supone que llevo cinco meses paseando este poemario por mi vida. hace cinco meses vivÃa en barcelona, no habÃa estado de vacaciones en cada punta de españa, no habÃa vuelto a casa.
hace cinco meses comencé un poemario sobre amar la vida y sobre la muerte desde el punto de vista de alguien que ama y tiene esperanza y se agarra a la belleza de las cosas. lloraba en el metro hacia maragall como lloré leyendo Artful de Ali Smith, porque leer sobre la muerte del amor de tu vida en clave sáfica es mi debilidad y mi mayor miedo. sÃ. y ahà está Mary Oliver escribiendo un poema sobre volver a casa del frÃo, otro sobre invitar a tus amigos a casa, otro sobre ver un cervatillo y que la naturaleza conviva contigo. qué bonito. siento que mi corazón lleva abrazadito bajo una manta desde junio.
y en la clave reciente, este mes, hace una semana, me habÃa quedado por el poema: Doesn’t Every Poet Write a Poem about Unrequited Love? llegó en el momento justo. Letter to _____ llegó en el momento justo. ¿estaba Mary Oliver escribiéndome una carta a mÃ, o a ti? quiero dejar de pensar en este amor que nada me aporta. in matter of love of this kind there are things we long to do but must not do. quiero dejar de pensar en él y pensar en las rosas y en las melodÃas, y en la poesÃa.
hace cinco meses comencé un poemario sobre amar la vida y sobre la muerte desde el punto de vista de alguien que ama y tiene esperanza y se agarra a la belleza de las cosas. lloraba en el metro hacia maragall como lloré leyendo Artful de Ali Smith, porque leer sobre la muerte del amor de tu vida en clave sáfica es mi debilidad y mi mayor miedo. sÃ. y ahà está Mary Oliver escribiendo un poema sobre volver a casa del frÃo, otro sobre invitar a tus amigos a casa, otro sobre ver un cervatillo y que la naturaleza conviva contigo. qué bonito. siento que mi corazón lleva abrazadito bajo una manta desde junio.
y en la clave reciente, este mes, hace una semana, me habÃa quedado por el poema: Doesn’t Every Poet Write a Poem about Unrequited Love? llegó en el momento justo. Letter to _____ llegó en el momento justo. ¿estaba Mary Oliver escribiéndome una carta a mÃ, o a ti? quiero dejar de pensar en este amor que nada me aporta. in matter of love of this kind there are things we long to do but must not do. quiero dejar de pensar en él y pensar en las rosas y en las melodÃas, y en la poesÃa.
January 19, 2019
I finally pulled this one off the shelf. Admittedly, it's because Mary Oliver just passed away this week. A few of this poems hit me hard, while others just weren't my thing. But I understand why Oliver is so revered. She'll be missed, but thankfully, we can revisit her poetry over and over again.
September 27, 2015
I’d expected to love this one because it was the book published after Oliver’s partner of 50 years died and supposedly was a beautiful meditation on grief. I didn’t get that. Unlike most of Oliver’s books, there were few passages I highlighted or poems I bookmarked to reread. Her discussions of religion � more prominent than in other books � seemed awkwardly formed, as if she were trying to find solace in it but couldn't. I’d put this one lower on the list of Oliver titles to try. That said, two bits I liked a lot. One is where she absorbs a lesson from roses around the world in springtime: “the answer was simply to rise/ in joyfulness, all their days./ Have I found any better teaching?� The other is a conclusion about grief: “Therefore I have given precedence/ to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods/ that hold you in the center of my world./ And I say to my body: grow thinner still./ And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song./ And I say to my heart: rave on.� Grade: B
September 7, 2016
I read this in snatches while sitting by my dying grandmother's side this past autumn. The idea of grief as a kind of thirst made complete sense to me. In one way, grief is a thirst for knowledge, for more time, for more details or information about the dead person that may never be satisfied. In each poem, Mary Oliver always sets the scene with exactly the right details, but here, I felt like that artistry was a mere coincidence, and not the central aim; a by-product. She wrote this book after the death of her partner of 40 years, and many of these poems are hard to read, emotionally speaking. I kept wanting to close the book and put it away, so as not to have to think through the idea of the death of a loved one, so as to not have to acknowledge that it was coming. But I kept reading, and I'm glad I did.
September 29, 2024
// Autumn 2024
Darn depressing to think about aforementioned research paper I did not get to write, but a lovely collection nonetheless. During this read, I was particularly enchanted by Oliver's insistence on paying attention to what creation is saying, and by the loving eye through which she watches the world.
// Christmas 2023
Second book read during Christmastide! I am still sick and coughing like a dying Victorian waif (though probably with more vigour and frustration)! But this was LOVELY and gave me a research idea I'm very excited for :)
// 2023
Doctor prescribed Mary Oliver to treat a heavy heart and it has helped :) thank you again, Ms Oliver
// 2022
I needed to read this :)
Darn depressing to think about aforementioned research paper I did not get to write, but a lovely collection nonetheless. During this read, I was particularly enchanted by Oliver's insistence on paying attention to what creation is saying, and by the loving eye through which she watches the world.
// Christmas 2023
Second book read during Christmastide! I am still sick and coughing like a dying Victorian waif (though probably with more vigour and frustration)! But this was LOVELY and gave me a research idea I'm very excited for :)
// 2023
Doctor prescribed Mary Oliver to treat a heavy heart and it has helped :) thank you again, Ms Oliver
// 2022
I needed to read this :)
May 13, 2018
This slender book of poems shimmers with grief, and gratitude, and amazement. I come back to Mary Oliver when I'm feeling frayed and frazzled, and I never cease to be touched, and calmed, and filled with wonder.
Read
January 18, 2021Marry Oliver’s depiction of nature was captivating, it made me feel at peace while reading. I feel as if I have new found appreciation for wilderness now. There is a lot of references to god and christianity in particular, which were the least enjoyable parts for me since I’m a believer of neither. Yet still, a delightful collection of poems!
April 23, 2021
Yes, another Mary Oliver book. They are what is feeding me and my soul and what I need. I’m very grateful for her and her words.
February 23, 2025
I had no idea that the death of molly sent mary onto a religious journey and reading this was both eye opening and conflicting for me
January 25, 2018
My work is loving the world. [...]
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
I really love this collection.
Thirst is a hopeful, contemplative, and inspiring series of poems about the dance between grief and graciousness. Mary Oliver blends her experiences with nature, loss, prayer, and God into a wonderful echo of a spiritual search, tracing her footsteps along the way in words, finding pain, grace, and beauty, and inviting the reader to experience some of that journey. There is a distinct spiritual voice in each of her poems, some of them reflecting on the gift of existence itself, others seeing hardship for what it is, and the potential it has for being an unrecognized blessing.
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
This book is dedicated to her long-time partner, who passed in 2005, and it reads as a soulful and sanguine lament. Highly recommended to those who want a small collection to savor, meditate on, and to pull out on Autumn walks for companionship in grief, and in wonder.
Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
I really love this collection.
Thirst is a hopeful, contemplative, and inspiring series of poems about the dance between grief and graciousness. Mary Oliver blends her experiences with nature, loss, prayer, and God into a wonderful echo of a spiritual search, tracing her footsteps along the way in words, finding pain, grace, and beauty, and inviting the reader to experience some of that journey. There is a distinct spiritual voice in each of her poems, some of them reflecting on the gift of existence itself, others seeing hardship for what it is, and the potential it has for being an unrecognized blessing.
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
This book is dedicated to her long-time partner, who passed in 2005, and it reads as a soulful and sanguine lament. Highly recommended to those who want a small collection to savor, meditate on, and to pull out on Autumn walks for companionship in grief, and in wonder.
Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.
February 24, 2009
The reviews of this book tell me that Mary Oliver writes in these pages as if she has had an encounter with the Divine. Oliver is one of my all time favorite poets. Her poem Peonies is near the top of my list. She is attune to nature in such a delicious way. This book of poems is not surprise but what is - is the spiritual nature, namely Christian nature of this book - her spirituality is not in a general no name sense. With her delicate sensiblities toward the world of nature coupled with her appreciate for the God who gave us this nature, this book is nothing short of a long, sweet, deep breath. Werner - thanks so much for pointing this book out to me. I'm on my second time through - rereading-
of particular note if you pick this book up for only a few poems be sure to read - Swimming with the Otter (very Annie Dillardish) - Mozart, for example - Making the House Ready for the Lord - The Winter Wood Arrives - After Her Death - What I said at Her Service - Praying - The Uses of Sorrow - and On Thy Wonderous Works I Will Meditate (Psalm 145)
"Oh Lord of melons, of mercy, though I am
not ready, nor worthy, I am climbing toward you."
of particular note if you pick this book up for only a few poems be sure to read - Swimming with the Otter (very Annie Dillardish) - Mozart, for example - Making the House Ready for the Lord - The Winter Wood Arrives - After Her Death - What I said at Her Service - Praying - The Uses of Sorrow - and On Thy Wonderous Works I Will Meditate (Psalm 145)
"Oh Lord of melons, of mercy, though I am
not ready, nor worthy, I am climbing toward you."
February 23, 2016
Many people don't get poetry. For me, it's like fireworks going off, set off by words. Or it's knowing something all your life, and finding that thought expressed for the first time by a fellow human being.
Still, poetry can be obscure or self-important. I don't mind obscure because sometimes you have to lift the latch for the fireworks to be set off. Self-important -- even that I can relate to. I know the feeling of importance.
A friend recommended this book to me. Mary Oliver is the most accessible poet I've ever read. There was recognition of what she was saying and emotional connection in so many of the poems. My friend said that Mary Oliver's previous works were about nature and not God. I found these poems exquisite -- and the title (and poem of the same name), applied to God. It reminded me of Psalm 42 -- As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul longs for You.
If you don't get poetry, at least pick up one of her books and let me know if her poetry doesn't touch you, too.
Still, poetry can be obscure or self-important. I don't mind obscure because sometimes you have to lift the latch for the fireworks to be set off. Self-important -- even that I can relate to. I know the feeling of importance.
A friend recommended this book to me. Mary Oliver is the most accessible poet I've ever read. There was recognition of what she was saying and emotional connection in so many of the poems. My friend said that Mary Oliver's previous works were about nature and not God. I found these poems exquisite -- and the title (and poem of the same name), applied to God. It reminded me of Psalm 42 -- As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul longs for You.
If you don't get poetry, at least pick up one of her books and let me know if her poetry doesn't touch you, too.
August 31, 2022
Thirst wasn’t my favourite Mary Oliver mostly because of the Christian poems. They did spark some feeling in me but I think it was more related to the fact that I wished my grandfather could have read them and we would have had that in common, and not really because I found anything from the poems themselves, sadly. It was probably because most of them related to some story from the Bible and I was a bit lost there.
But Mary Oliver always shines through, and I found her poems on grief, death and love as moving as expected. Knowing this collection was published a year after Molly Mallone Cook died and having read Our world, her poems about her and grappling with her passing are hard-hitting and moving. I will never not recommend Mary Oliver and I do believe my lack of connection with parts of this book were my problem and mine only.
But Mary Oliver always shines through, and I found her poems on grief, death and love as moving as expected. Knowing this collection was published a year after Molly Mallone Cook died and having read Our world, her poems about her and grappling with her passing are hard-hitting and moving. I will never not recommend Mary Oliver and I do believe my lack of connection with parts of this book were my problem and mine only.
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