Upstream

section one

Upstream

One tree is like another tree, but not too much. One tulip is like the next tulip, but not altogether. More or less like people a general outline, then the stunning individual strokes. Hello Tom, hello Andy. Hello ­Archibald Violet, and Clarissa Bluebell. Hello Lilian Willow, and Noah, the oak tree I have hugged and kissed every first day of spring for the last thirty years. And in reply its thousands of leaves tremble! What a life is ours! Doesn t anybody in the world anymore want to get up in the 

middle of the night and

sing?

In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be. Wordsworth studied himself and found the subject astonishing. Actually what he studied was his relationship to the harmonies and also the discords of the natural world. That s what created the excitement.

I walk, all day, across the heaven-verging field.

And whoever thinks these are worthy, breathy words I am writing down is kind. Writing is neither vibrant life nor docile artifact but a text that would put all its money on the hope of suggestion. Come with me into the field of sunflowers is a better line than anything you will find here, and the sunflowers themselves far more wonderful than any words about them.

I walked, all one spring day, upstream, sometimes in the midst of the ripples, sometimes along the shore. My company were violets, Dutchman s-breeches, spring beauties, trilliums, bloodroot, ferns rising so curled one could feel the upward push of the delicate hairs upon their bodies. My parents were downstream, not far away, then farther away because I was walking the wrong way, upstream instead of downstream. Finally I was advertised on the hotline of help, and yet there I was, slopping along happily in the stream s coolness. So maybe it was the right way

Born in a small town in Ohio, Mary Oliver published her first book of poetry in 1963 at the age of 28. Over the course of her long career, she received numerous awards. Her fourth book, American Primitive, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984. She led workshops and held residencies at various colleges and universities, including Bennington College, where she held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching. She died in 2019.

There's hardly a page in my copy of Upstream that isn't folded down or underlined and scribbled on, so charged is Oliver's language . . . I need a moment away from unceasing word drip of debates about the election, about whether Elena Ferrante has the right to privacy, about whether Bob Dylan writes 'Literature.' I need a moment, more than a moment, in the steady and profound company of Mary Oliver and I think you might need one too.   Maureen Corrigan, NPR s Fresh Air

Uniting essays from Oliver s previous books and elsewhere, this gem of a collection offers a compelling synthesis of the poet s thoughts on the natural, spiritual and artistic worlds . . . With each page, the book gains accumulative power. The various threads intertwine and become taut. The New York Times

When reading Mary Oliver in any form poetry or prose you oughtn't be surprised when suddenly you find yourself at a full stop. When you come across a sentence so arresting in its beauty its construction, its word choice, its truths you can't help but pause, hit "reread," and await the transformative soaking-in, the awakening of mind and soul that's sure to settle deeply. She never fails to stir us from whatever is the natural speck before our gaze to the immeasurable heaven's dome above and beyond. Chicago Tribune

Upstream is a testament to a lifetime of paying attention, and an invitation to readers to do the same. Christian Science Monitor

The richness of these essays part revelation, part instruction will prompt readers to dive in again and again. The Washington Post

A tremendously vitalizing read . . . grounding and elevating at the same time. Brain Pickings   

Oliver immerses us in an ever-widening circle, in which a shrub or flower opens onto the cosmos, revealing our meager, masterful place in it. Hold Upstream in your hands, and you hold a miracle of ravishing imagery