UPSTREAM Selected Essays

Poets Hala Alyan, Joy Sullivan, and Kate Baer perform this collection of poet Mary Oliver's essays. The narrators deliver different sections of the audiobook, adding short personal descriptions about why they love Oliver's work. The essays in this collection illustrate the author's eye for prose; Oliver's background as a poet ensures that not a word is out of place. Sullivan and Baer narrate the middle sections of the book, which focus on Oliver's reverence for other poets such as Shelley, Whitman, and Poe. But Alyan's performance of the first and last sections of the audiobook is the standout. She captures Oliver's intense love for the natural world and the ways that her obsession with nature fills her work. K.D.W. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE 2023]