Photograph by Lee Purcell
When I Am Among the Trees read by Amanda Palmer
Mary Oliver’s poem, When I Am Among the Trees, is from her collection, Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, published in 2006. I discovered the following reading by Amanda Palmer while visiting Brain Pickings, the brilliant, thought-provoking site created by Maria Popova, where art, inspiration, and philosophy fill the pages.
Much of Oliver’s work revolves around the natural world, not only as a sanctuary from the mechanistic constructs of society, but also as a wild, untrammeled, and sometimes violent place that teaches life’s lessons in stark and surprising ways.
For more about Mary Oliver’s life and works, visit the Poetry Foundation.
“I decided very early that I wanted to write. But I didn’t think of it as a career. I didn’t even think of it as a profession. . . It was the most exciting thing, the most powerful thing, the most wonderful thing to do with my life. ”