Dream Work by Mary Oliver
Published 1986 · 25,575 words · about 2 hours at an average pace
How hard is Dream Work to read?
Dream Work scores 47 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 45 out of 100
- Plain, deliberately unliterary.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Short lines, simple syntax.
- Abstraction: 62 out of 100
- Concrete nature opening onto direct moral statement.
- Information density: 48 out of 100
- Light per poem.
- Narrative indirection: 40 out of 100
- A speaking voice close to the poet.
- Symbolic density: 68 out of 100
- Every animal in the book is also an argument.
- Ironic distance: 30 out of 100
- Almost none; the sincerity is the point.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- Poems usually end on a question addressed to the reader.
- Structural complexity: 35 out of 100
- A collection with recurring figures.
How Dream Work is regarded
Dream Work holds a literary regard score of 58 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.