New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1

“One morning/the fox came down the hill, glittering and confident,/and didn’t see me—and I thought:/so this is the world./I’m not in it./It is beautiful.”

There is a reverent curiosity in Mary Oliver for all things the world has to show her. And in this collection, the images slick by like soft clicks of a viewfinder and wash over you that same wonderment. Through the rain and peonies, whelks and wild geese—and the people, she doesn’t forget the people—Mary Oliver finds a place for that soft animal, inside of life and after, to walk a while, and ask.

“After awhile/I forget things, as I have forgotten time.”