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.
InThe 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 theBoston 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 DayOliver has the ability to transform everyday life events into something extraordl#Ç