Blue PasturesBlue Pastures

With consummate craftsmanship, Mary Oliver has fashioned fifteen luminous prose pieces: on nature, writing, and herself and those around her. She praises Whitman, denounces cuteness, notes where to find the extraordinary, and extols solitude. "The soliloquies in Blue Pastures-which seems intended as an informal sequel to her writer's manual, A Poetry Handbook-urge her readers to be as quiet as hunters, and to listen for the soft footfalls of art; inspiration, she insists, is rarely found in drawing rooms." - New York Times "The best part of the book is Oliver's plein-air poetizing, consisting of tidbits almost all jotted down "somewhere out-of-doors'': in her partial observations of nature ("Just at the lacey edge of the sea, a dolphin's skull''), her exhortations ("You must not ever stop being whimsical'') or an evocative list ("Molasses, an orange, fennel seed, anise seed, rye flour, two cakes of yeast''), readers catch the first whiffs of poetry." - Publishers Weekly "This transcendent collection is Oliver's joyful sharing of her love of her craft." - Library Journal