Description
Dream Work, a collection of forty-five poems, follows both chrono-logically and logically Mary Oliver’s American Primitive, which won her the Pulitzer Prize for the finest book of poetry published in 1983 by an American poet. The depth and diversity of perceptual awareness-so steadfast and radiant in American Primitive-continue in Dream Work. She has turned her attention in these poems to the solitary and difficult labors of the spirit-to accepting the truth about one’s personal world, and to valuing the triumphs while transcending the fail-ures of human relationships.
Whether by way of inheritance-as in her poem about the Holocaust-or through a painful glimpse into the present-as in “Acid,” a poem about an injured boy begging in the streets of Indonesia-the events and tendencies of history take on a new importance here. More deeply than in her previous volumes, the sensibility behind these poems has merged with the world. Mary Oliver’s willingness to be joyful continues, deepened by self-awareness, by experience, and by choice.
God Love Poetry, In-Prints You 
Hansel and Gretel 
Insistence 
Comic Poems 
Luck Is the Hook 
Spiritlands 
Book of Mercy 
This Is Yarrow 
Dog Poems 
Winter Tales 
My First Mr. Men Nursery Rhymes 
Never good with horses 
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats 
River Lane 
You Can't Take an Elephant on the Bus 
Jinx 
Is This a Poem?: What makes a poem, and how YOU can write one 
Floss 
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats 
Steep Tea 
Poems