Why I Wake Early: New Poems

Why I Wake Early is a collection of forty-seven new poems by Mary Oliver, published by Beacon Press in 2004.

The subjects are small and specific, which is the point: crickets, toads, trout lilies, black snakes, goldenrod, a bear, deer at the edge of a field. Several poems are simply about the arrival of morning, and the book ends with one about lingering in happiness, which is a harder thing to write well than it sounds.

Nothing here is doing anything unfamiliar for her. What it does have is an unusual evenness of temper. Coming two years before Thirst, it reads now like the last of her books written from an untroubled position, and it is often the one recommended to somebody who wants Oliver at her most straightforwardly glad.

Ninety-six pages.