New and Selected Poems, Volume One

by Shannon Schrein

Kimmerer shares Oliver's gift for finding the sacred in botanical observation, but she weaves in Indigenous philosophy and scientific rigor alongside the wonder. Where Oliver asks 'what will you do with your one wild and precious life?', Kimmerer answers by showing how reciprocity with the natural world becomes a practice of gratitude and belonging—her essays have the same meditative quality as Oliver's best poems, just in prose form.

by Jorge Luis Borges

Henderson catalogs strange creatures—from the axolotl to the anglerfish—with the same attentive wonder Oliver brings to herons and grasshoppers, but he's writing natural history essays rather than poetry. His prose has an almost Romantic quality; he makes you see how an obscure animal's existence is its own kind of poem, and his curiosity about what these beings 'mean' echoes Oliver's deeper questioning about our relationship to the living world.

by Roberto Bolaño

This is the surprise pick—a sprawling, sometimes chaotic novel that seems nothing like Oliver's crystalline poems until you realize both writers are obsessed with the same question: how do you live meaningfully in a world that often feels indifferent to meaning? Bolaño's young poets are searching for something transcendent through literature and experience, much like Oliver searches through attention to the natural world. The book's underlying current is a kind of spiritual hunger dressed up in literary adventure.

by John Harold Hewitt

Merwin was Oliver's contemporary and shares her commitment to clarity and the natural world, but his poems often have a quieter, more elusive quality—less declarative joy and more mysterious presence. Where Oliver might celebrate a summer day directly, Merwin approaches wonder sideways, through absence and silence. If you loved Oliver's accessibility and her refusal to make nature writing precious, you'll find Merwin's work similarly grounded but with an additional layer of enigmatic restraint.