Dream Work

Book excerpt: Newly repackaged as a Penguin paperback, an “astonishing” book of poetry from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Primitive and “one of our very best poets” (New York Times Book Review) Dream Work, a collection of forty-five poems originally published in 1986, follows both chronologically and logically Mary Oliver’s American Primitive, which won her the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1983. The depth and diversity of perceptual awareness, so steadfast and radiant in American Primitive, continues in Dream Work. Additionally, she has turned her attention in these poems to the solitary and difficult labors of the spirit, to accepting the truth about one’s personal world, and to valuing the triumphs while transcending the failures of human relationships.