A stunning collection of four of Mary Oliver's most beloved books of poetry, A Thousand Mornings , Blue Horses , Dog Songs , and Felicity , packaged together for the first time Throughout her career, Mary Oliver touched innumerable readers with her brilliantly crafted verse. In this box set, containing her four most recently published collections, she returns to the imagery and subjects that have come to define her life's work: transporting us to the coastline of her beloved home, Provincetown; reminding us of what it truly means to belong to the natural world;, celebrating the special bond between human and dog, and expounding on the wild and the quiet within our own hearts. Within every book, Oliver honors life, love, and beauty. This beautifully designed set is the perfect gift for every occasion, and a wonderful addition to the library of both longtime fans and new readers. Praise for A Thousand Mornings : “Her compact poems are conversational and teasing, yet their taproots reach deeply into the aquifers of religion, philosophy, and literature . . . Oliver is funny and renegade as she protests cultural vapidity, greed, violence, and environmental decimation and ravishing in her close readings of nature.” —Booklist “If you're one of the many, many fans of National Book Award- and Pulitzer-winning poet Mary Oliver, you'll very much welcome A Thousand Mornings.” —Shelf Awareness Praise for Dog Songs : “ Dog Songs . . . is a sweet golden retriever of a book that curls up with the reader.” — New York Times “Oliver . . . is one of our most adored poets, and a longtime lover of dogs. The popularity of [Dog Songs ] feels as inevitable and welcome as a wagging tail upon homecoming.” — The Boston Globe “Mary Oliver is a canine lover par excellence. Her combo of woman’s best friend and poetry is utterly irresistible.” — Oprah.com Praise for Blue Horses : “A lyric collection to be treasured.” — The New York Journal of Books Praise for Felicity : “An eloquent celebration of simple joy from one of America’s most beloved poets.” —Washington Post “These poems sustain us rather than divert us. Although few poets have fewer human beings in their poems than Mary Oliver, it is ironic that few poets also go so far to help us forward.” — New York Times Book Review 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. "I Happened to Be Standing" I don’t know where prayers go, or what they do. Do cats pray, while they sleep half-asleep in the sun? Does the opossum pray as it crosses the street? The sunflowers? The old black oak growing older every year? I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of little importance, in full self-attendance. A condition I can’t really call being alive. Is a prayer a gift, or a petition, or does it matter? The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way. Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not. While I was thinking this I happened to be standing just outside my door, with my notebook open, which is the way I begin every morning. Then a wren in the privet began to sing. He was positively drenched in enthusiasm, I don’t know why. And yet, why not. I wouldn’t persuade you from whatever you believe or whatever you don’t. That’s your business. But I thought, of the wren’s singing, what could this be if it isn’t a prayer? So I just listened, my pen in the air. "Foolishness? No, It's Not." Sometimes I spend all day trying to count the leaves on a single tree. To do this I have to climb branch by branch and write down the numbers in a little book. So I suppose, from their point of view, it’s reasonable that my friends say: what foolishness! She’s got her head in the clouds again. But it’s not. Of course I have to give up, but by then I’m half crazy with the wonder of it—the abundance of the leaves, the quietness of the branches, the hopelessness of my effort. And I am in that delicious and important place, roaring with laughter, full of earth-praise. "How It Begins" A puppy is a puppy is a puppy. He’s probably in a basket with a bunch of other puppies. Then he’s a little older and he’s nothing but a bundle of longing. He doesn’t even understand it. Then someone picks him up and says, “I want this one.” "How It Is With Us, and How It Is With Them" We become religious, then we turn from it, then we are in need and maybe we turn back. We turn to making money, then we turn to the moral life, then we think about money again. We meet wonderful people, but lose them in our busyness. We’re, as the saying g