Dream Work

“Dream Work is made up of poems that fulfill the demand of lyric poetry by being short, passionate, charged with emotion and its necessary companion, thought. . . . The music in Oliver’s writing is unmistakable. . . . Dream Work is an outstanding book.” —Los Angeles Times

In this collection of forty-five poems, originally published in 1986, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver turns her attention to the solitary and difficult labors of the spirit, the parallel awe and destruction that is nature, and the great wonder and struggle of being. Including some of her most well-known poems, such as “Wild Geese” and “The Journey,” Dream Work demonstrates the remarkable depth of perceptural awareness that underlies much of Oliver’s writing. An expressive exploration of the world and how one fits within it, Oliver’s collection is a rich but unflinching meditation on how to exist amid the darkness while always, tirelessly, bending toward the light.