introduction

flow
flow
Habits, Differences, and the Light That Stays
Can you imagine the poem?
Three Histories and a Hummingbird

Wordsworth's Mountain
Wordsworth's Mountain
Dog story
Perfect Days
When the city calendar starts to say summer
Wasteland: Elegy

Artists in pursuit of beauty
Emerson: Preface
Hawthorne's The Moss on the Old Vicarage
The House of the Seven Gables

dust
Is prose poetry okay?
A tender morning
dust
flounder, seven
City Morning Walk
Flounder, eight
solace
Flounder, nine
house
Poetry Summer Night
Moving the city snake into the garden
Beside the cornfield with the city's hair down
Where I live
I woke up on a summer morning
Prose poem One Winter Day

Acknowledgements
Translator's Note
Author's chronology
Tributes to Mary Oliver

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet touches life with music-like language.
“Walk the world to love the world.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver writes prose that is both beautiful and transparent.
In "Perfect Days," a collection of stories about her beliefs, thoughts, and inspirations, Mary Oliver gazes upon the wonders of creation and the magnificent beauty of the Earth, including humanity, and interprets them in the language of a poet.
In it we can see brilliant yet simple images drawn through language.

Mary Oliver became known in Korea when novelist Kim Yeon-su quoted her poem "Wild Geese" in her novel "Whoever You Are, How Lonely You Are," but her first work to be published in Korea was "Perfect Days."
He has received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and is still active as a poet and writer at the age of 79.
The New York Times called her “America’s best-selling poet,” and many people read and quote her poetry.
One can get a sense of its status by looking at Vice President Joe Biden reading Mary Oliver's poem "Wild Geese" at the 2009 September 11th terrorist attack memorial service.


In prose and poetry, Mary Oliver ponders death and memory, marvels at the usefulness of trash in Provincetown, where she has lived for over fifty years, and recalls the natural mysteries of her childhood.
He also reveals his literary heritage by paying tribute to Wordsworth, Emerson, and Hawthorne, whom he admires.
In this book, Oliver talks about “the relationship between the soul and the landscape.”

Poets must read and study, but they must also learn to lean in and whisper, shout, and dance in their own way.
Otherwise, it would be better to just copy old books.
But that's not it.
Absolutely not.
Because in our old world there is always a new self swimming around that feels it can express itself in a unique way.
That's what matters.
That a moist and rich world demands a new and serious response from all of us.
Every morning the world asks us grand questions.
“You live here like this.
“Do you have anything to say?” This book is what I want to say.
- From the "Preface"

A profound reflection on nature, language, and life, following in the footsteps of Walden.
“We already live in paradise.”

"Perfect Days" tells the story of the nature around Provincetown, his own story, and that of his companion, Molly Malone Cook.
Through the prose, which is like music and contains everything that makes up the poet, his usual thoughts and the things he realized within them, we vaguely feel the poet's life and consciousness.
Among them are several poems that Oliver says can be thought of as “little hallelujahs,” poems that “just sit on the page and breathe.”


Mary Oliver, known as a nature poet and ecological poet, looks at nature as it is and says that the place where we live now is 'paradise'.
Speaking of being stranded on the sand when the tide goes out, of being bathed in the mist of a whale's puff, Oliver invites readers to discover themselves and their experiences at the center of her world.
Although Mary Oliver is sometimes compared to Emerson and Thoreau in her praise of nature, she accepts nature as it is rather than looking at it from a human-centered perspective.
In it, we discover the beauty of “very ordinary moments.”

A few years ago, at a very ordinary moment, after an early morning walk, I emerged from the forest into the warm, bright sunlight, and was suddenly overcome by a sudden, euphoric feeling.
It was more like floating on top of a sea of ​​happiness than drowning in it.
I didn't try to catch happiness, but it was given to me.
Time seemed to have disappeared.
The urgency has also disappeared.
The important distinction between myself and everything else has also disappeared.
I knew that I belonged to the world and was comfortable being bound to the whole.
It didn't feel like I had solved the world's puzzle, but rather that I was able to find happiness in the midst of confusion.
- From "Perfect Days" on page 62

Mary Oliver also talks about poets and writers.
The “whirlwind” of Wordsworth’s “Beauty and the Strange,” the “tender” side of Hawthorne, Emerson’s belief that “when men awaken to truth, they will turn all the heavy sails of their lives to a moral purpose.”
Through these writings, we find ourselves tracing her literary origins and learning from them.


As for me, there are a hundred reasons why I should feel impoverished, not only in my literary and contemplative life, but also in my emotional and resonant life, by Emerson's absence, but nothing is greater than opening the door of thought to the world's splendid and precarious present.
Whenever I start something worthwhile, I think of Emerson.
But even when I'm subpar, he's there to correct me, lovingly, affectionately, yet firmly.
He has taught me as profoundly as any writer, and the outcome we will achieve is predictable.
- From "Emerson: Preface" on page 85

The poet's inner self, the beauty he discovers in the world
“You live here like this.”

Mary Oliver, a natural poet, said that writing poetry is “different from other labor.”
Unlike poetry, she writes prose for a long time, and because she feels the weight of the work, her prose touches us even more deeply.
As bravely as her words, the calmly flowing writing reveals Mary Oliver's thoughts and beliefs.
It allows us to embrace our own lives, amidst the chaos and ordinary moments, and to see the wonders of nature.
This is truly a poet's tribute to the world.


Mary Oliver, who rarely gives interviews and lives surrounded by nature in Provincetown, discovers the beauty of nature and shares it with her readers.
Furthermore, it connects us “to our source in the natural world, to its beauty, horror, mystery, and comfort.”
American poet Maxine Cummins once said that while Thoreau was a “blizzard watcher,” Oliver was a “swamp patroller,” a “relentless guide to the natural world.”


Mary Oliver, whom novelist Kim Yeon-su describes as “a person I wish only I liked” and an author she “would like only I to read.”
『Perfect Days』, in which she reveals herself as if humming.
Now, Korean readers have the opportunity to read this dazzling prose.