Our World [Paperback]

Mary Oliver, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, is one of the most celebrated poets in America. Her partner Molly Malone Cook, who died in 2005, was a photographer and pioneer gallery owner. Intertwining Oliver's prose with Cook's photographs,Our Worldis an intimate testament to their life together. The poet's moving text captures not only the unique qualities of her partner's work, but the very texture of their shared world.Readers who savor Oliver's exquisite gifts of attentiveness, her lean lines, her celebration of the holiness of what is, will delight in her gifts applied to the being she loved longest. And anyone who sees the best of Cook's photographs here will celebrate a remarkable eye. —Brian Doyle,Christian Century

Oliver interweaves entries from Cook's journal with her own prose-and-poetry text, revealing a richly textured life, a shared world that included prominent writers and artists. —Patricia A. Kossmann,AmericaA private person by nature,Mary Oliver(1935–2019) gave very few interviews over the years. Instead, she preferred to let her work speak for itself. And speak it has, for the past five decades, to countless readers. TheNew York Timesrecently acknowledged Mary Oliver as “far and away, this country’s best-selling poet.” Born in a small town in Ohio, Oliver published her first book of poetry in 1963 at the age of 28;No Voyage and Other Poems, originally printed in the UK by Dent Press, was reissued in the United States in 1965 by Houghton Mifflin. Oliver has since published twenty books of poetry and six books of prose. As a young woman, Oliver studied at Ohio State University and Vassar College, but took no degree. She lived for several years at the home of Edna St. Vincent Millay in upper New York state, companion to the poet’s sister Norma Millay. It was there, in the late ’50s, that she met photographer Molly Malone Cook. For lS.