Upstream: Selected Essays

The New York Times bestselling collection of essays from beloved poet Mary Oliver, also named one of O, The Oprah Magazine’s Ten Best Books of the Year, now in audio.

“I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.”

So begins Upstream, a collection of essays in which revered poet Mary Oliver reflects on her willingness to lose herself within the beauty and mysteries of the natural world and the world of literature. Emphasizing the significance of her childhood “friend” Walt Whitman, who inspired her to vanish into the world of her own writing, Oliver meditates on the forces that allowed her to create a life for herself out of work and love. 

Upstream follows Oliver as she contemplates the pleasure of artistic labor, her boundless curiosity for the flora and fauna that surround her, and the responsibility she has inherited from Shelley, Wordsworth, Emerson, Poe, and Frost, the great thinkers and writers of the past, to live thoughtfully, intelligently, and to observe with passion. Throughout this collection, Oliver positions not just herself upstream but us as well—as she encourages us all to keep moving, to lose ourselves in the awe of the unknown, and to give power and time to the creative and whimsical urges that live within us.

Narrated by poets Hala Alyan, Joy Sullivan, and Kate Baer.