Little Alleluias, Mary Oliver
Little Alleluias, Mary Oliver
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Little Alleluias
Collected Poetry and Prose

Author: Mary Oliver, Natalie Diaz

Narrator: Kimberly Farr, Natalie Diaz, Niyati Patel

Unabridged: 6 hr 17 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/09/2025


Synopsis

A curated compendium of poetry and prose from the award-winning poet Mary Oliver, including the book-length masterpiece The Leaf and the Cloud, the collection What Do We Know, andessays from Long Life—with a foreword by fellow Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Postcolonial Love Poem Natalie Diaz.

For the many admirers of Mary Oliver's breathtaking poetry of touch and transcendence, as well as for those coming to her words for the first time, Little Alleluias is a revelation.

These works observe, search, pause, astonish, and give thanks to both love and the natural world. In constant conversation with the sublime, (i.e. "Are you afraid? / Somewhere a thousand swans are flying / through winter's worst storm."), Oliver has the rare skill of rendering life: her poems bring movement to stillness, and people to the Earth, themselves, and each other. Her essays declare her heart and her home, too, alongside thoughts on Wordsworth, Emerson, and Hawthorne—the odes and elegies of Provincetown's resident poet.
 
Page by page, Mary Oliver invites us to walk through her minutes, her moments, and revere the light and dark and rainbowed clothes of world alongside her. With three distinct books collected in one volume for the first time, Little Alleluias asks what passes and what persists, and offers readers the peace that every mind deserves.
 
“Hers is a purposeful language, one that looks not just with attention but with sensual intention, and though awestruck, seeks to hold, even briefly, the unknowns of the energies that make any life. Little alleluias, she called her writings. Not meant to define but to praise, to rejoice in the maker and what has been made, to dare be heard as a whisper or a shout in this immense world.”—Natalie Diaz, in her Foreword

About Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver (1935–2019), one of the most popular and widely honored poets in the U.S., was the author of more than thirty books of poetry and prose. Over the course of her long and illustrious career, she received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for American Primitive in 1984. Oliver also received the Shelley Memorial Award; a Guggenheim Fellowship; an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Achievement Award; the Christopher Award and the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award for House of Light; the National Book Award for New and Selected Poems; a Lannan Foundation Literary Award; and the New England Booksellers Association Award for Literary Excellence. She lived most of her life in Provincetown, Massachusetts.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Lavelle on June 19, 2025

that Mary Oliver poem will save you btw......more

Goodreads review by Kimberly on August 26, 2025

"Little Alleluias" is a wonderful introduction to the poems and lyrical prose of Mary Oliver. Reading these works is like taking a walk through nature and stopping to appreciate everything around you, from the smallest grain of sand or seed to the vastness of the ocean or the night sky. The writing......more

Goodreads review by Keely on August 25, 2025

There's no one like Mary Oliver to make you pause and wonder, What am I even doing with my life? This compilation of some of her evocative poetry and prose does that masterfully. As I read, I felt convinced that I, too, should be dressing in the dark and going out to wander my stretch of the world u......more

Goodreads review by Chelsea on August 26, 2025

You can’t conjure up an image of Mary Oliver without thinking of nature, so I knew what was waiting for me before I even opened this book. The poems had an equal mix of animals, the earth, and how we–or Oliver at least–sit around pondering all that surrounds us. I enjoyed how many poems included dif......more

Goodreads review by em on August 12, 2025

"therefore why pray to permanence, why not pray to impermanence, to change, to-- whatever comes next." mary oliver is a guiding light i'll follow anywhere. i loved this collection because it contained so many poems i'd never read before & lotsss of prose passages that were new. howeverrrr, i did lov......more


Quotes

Select Praise for Mary Oliver

"A rigorous mind combined with a capacity for devotion; a desire to find the exact, economical, shining phrase; a wish to witness, and a wish to share."—Chicago Tribune

"A master of spare and evocative imagery."—Poetry

"Oliver's poems are thoroughly convincing as genuine, moving, and implausible as the first caressing breeze of spring."—The New York Times