This collection of poems by Mary Oliver once again invites the reader to step across the threshold of ordinary life into a world of natural and spiritual luminosity. What changes is an increased focus on nature and an increased precision with language that has made her one of our very best poets. These poems sustain us rather than divert us. Although few poets have fewer human beings in their poems than Mary Oliver, it is ironic that few poets also go so far to help us forward. With The Character , Osman comes onstage to take her place as one of the most inventive and reflective poets of her generation.
Poetry here is alive and in contact with everything possible.
Coeditor of the influential magazine Chain, Osman teaches at Ursinus College, in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, where she lives. This unique collection offers poems by Pulitzer Prize winners Stanley Kunitz, Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, Anthony Hecht, Maxine Kumin, Louis Gluck, and Philip Levine, as well as the exceptional Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, Grace Paley, Marge Piercy, Denise Levertov, Muriel Rukeyser, Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, and many more. A brilliant spectrum of poetic voices. . . . This vibrant collection serves both as a guide to Jewish American poetry and a distillation of Jewish American sensibility and culture. He lives near Tampa, Florida.