Gilbakka posted:
Finished reading UPSTREAM by Mary Oliver. This is a collection of 18 essays, published in 2016, by a woman who has been described as America's best-selling poet. Mary Oliver is a winner of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, and holds four honorary doctorates.
Besides being a poet, Mary Oliver is a longstanding environmentalist. For most of her 82 years she made it her duty to be very close to nature --- woods, waterways, all kinds of flora and fauna. Reading her essays, I am amazed at her intimate knowledge of these things. I had to check Google Images for goosefish, sea robin, tautog, skate fish, black dogfish, bluefish, spider crab, ocean sunfish, golden club plants, cattails, honey locust blossoms, merganser ducks, great horned owl, screech owl, snowy owl, etc. She pays attention to them all. "Attention is the beginning of devotion," she says.
I'm happy to say my poem, The Tempering Fire by Vic Pandal, has been selected for publication in the Suffolk County Poetry Review 2017.