Little Alleluias: Collected Poetry and Prose

Trade Paperback – New

An archival compendium of three complete works by Mary Oliver: the book-length poemThe Leaf and the Cloud,the collectionWhat Do We Know,and essays fromLong Lifewith a foreword by fellow Pulitzer Prize-winning author ofPostcolonial Love PoemNatalie 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 Alleluiasis 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 and essays bring movement to stillness, and people to the Earth, themselves, and each other. Page by page, she 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 Alleluiasasks 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