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reviewed Upstream by Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver: Upstream (2016) 4 stars

"'In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly …

the world's otherness

No rating

My favorite part of this book is the section on Emerson, Poe, Whitman, and Wordsworth. The nature writing was less of a draw for me, but even when I wasn't that engaged Oliver would come out what a pearl like this:

"I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything - other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned: that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness - the beauty and the mystery of the world, out. in the fields or deep inside books - can re-dignify the worst-stung heart." (15)