Not a perfect 5 stars (details to follow), but we’re going to round up.

I was first introduced to Mary Oliver in a high school English class — AP Lang, if memory serves; the piece was her essay “Owls,” which I was delighted to find included here — and it was one of those fortuitous instances where the work is so wonderful and the teacher so terrific that the in-class dissection only enhanced my enjoyment of the writing.

Quite honestly I’m not crazy about the section where she talks about other authors (Wordsworth, Poe, Whitman), but that’s probably just because if I was in the mood for literary analysis I’d write it myself. Her insights are relatable for the most part, and in some ways offer a different perspective to broaden my own, but I’m much more interested in her musings on nature and humankind.