House of Light: Poems

Newly repackaged as a Penguin paperback, a “genuine, moving, and implausible” (The New York Times Book Review) collection of poems from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

“The Summer Day” (From House of Light)

Mary Oliver’s words guide us, with solace and empathy, across the rocky terrain of human existence. In House of Light, which was originally published in 1990, the Pulitzer Prize-winner offers us an opportunity to transcend ordinary life into a realm of natural wonder. Oliver investigates themes on “how to love this world" and to live “as though time didn’t exist” in her poems “Spring” and “The Swan,” and she awakens within us a renewed sense of awe in “The Ponds”: “Still, what I want in my life / is to be willing / to be dazzled— / to cast aside the weight of facts / and maybe even / to float a little / above this difficult world.” As her words suspend time and space, Oliver encourages us to attune ourselves to the quiet moments of enlightenment that perforate each day. Meditative and soulful, the forty-six poems in this collection honor our collective threads of humanity and our never-ending quest for grace.

About the Author

Born in a small town in Ohio, Mary Oliver published her first book of poetry in 1963 at the age of 28. Over the course of her long career, she received numerous awards. Her fourth book, American Primitive, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984. She led workshops and held residencies at various colleges and universities, including Bennington College, where she held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching. She died in 2019.