Mary oliver biography poetry

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She was awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, American Academy of Arts and Letters Achievement Award. The forest is depicted not just as a setting, but as an active participant in the dream-like experience, offering a place of quiet renewal.

5.”When Death Comes” (1992)

When Death Comes contemplates the inevitable end of life with grace and acceptance.

Her works are known for their clarity, precision, and deep emotional resonance, capturing moments of insight, discovery, and reverence for the natural world.

1.”Wild Geese” (1986)

Perhaps her most famous poem, Wild Geese invites readers to embrace their true selves and find comfort in nature.

Oliver has since published many works of poetry and prose (the complete list appears below).

As a young woman, Oliver studied at Ohio State University and Vassar College, but took no degree. It also reflects Oliver’s approach to writing as a form of meditation and reverence.

7.”The Black Snake” (1992)

The Black Snake reflects Oliver’s understanding of life and death as a cyclical process.

She lived for several years at the home of Edna St. Vincent Millay in upper New York state, companion to the poet’s sister Norma Millay. She has also received the Shelley Memorial Award; a Guggenheim Fellowship; an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Achievement Award; the Christopher Award and the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award for House of Light; the National Book Award for New and Selected Poems; a Lannan Foundation Literary Award; and the New England Booksellers Association Award for Literary Excellence.

Oliver’s essays have appeared in Best American Essays 1996, 1998, 2001; the Anchor Essay Annual 1998, as well as Orion, Onearth and other periodicals.

She is a poet of wisdom and generosity whose vision allows us to look intimately at a world not of our making.”

Oliver’s honors include an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award, a Lannan Literary Award, the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Prize and Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Oliver held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College until 2001.

Born in 1935 in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised in nearby Maple Heights, Mary Oliver passed away on January 17, 2019.

Mary Oliver’s books of poetry include: No Voyage and Other Poems (1963); The River Styx, Ohio, and Other Poems (1972); Twelve Moons (1979); American Primitive (1983); Dream Work (1986); House of Light (1990); New and Selected Poems (1992); White Pine (1994); West Wind (1997); The Leaf and the Cloud (2000); What Do We Know (2002); Owls and Other Fantasies (2003); Why I Wake Early (2004); Blue Iris (2004); Wild Geese: Selected Poems (2004); New and Selected Poems, Volume Two (2005); Thirst (2006); Red Bird (2008); The Truro Bear and Other Adventures (2008); Evidence (2009); Swan (2010); A Thousand Mornings (2012); Dog Songs (2013); Blue Horses (2014); Felicity (2015); and, Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (2017).

Mary Oliver’s prose works include: A Poetry Handbook (1994); Blue Pastures (1995); Rules for the Dance (1998); Winter Hours (1999); Long Life (2004); Our Worldwith Molly Malone Cook (2007); and, Upstream: Selected Essays (2016).

Among her many honors are the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for American Primitive and the National Book Award in 1992 for New and Selected Poetry.

After Malone Cook’s death in 2005, Oliver moved to the southeastern coast of Florida.

Its opening lines, “You do not have to be good. Oliver reflects on the soul’s ability to find solace and understanding in nature’s eternal rhythms, suggesting that it holds answers to questions that the mind cannot.

10.”Blue Iris” (2003)

Blue Iris is a poem about renewal and the beauty of nature’s fleeting moments.

Instead, she prefers to let her work speak for itself. For more than forty years, Cook and Oliver made their home together, largely in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where they lived until Cook’s death in 2005.

Over the course of her long and illustrious career, Oliver has received numerous awards. Her books of prose include Long Life: Essays and Other Writings (Da Capo Press, 2004); Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse (Mariner Books, 1998); Blue Pastures (Harcourt, Inc., 1995); and A Poetry Handbook (Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1994).

Oliver, who cited Walt Whitman as an influence, is best known for her awe-filled, often hopeful, reflections on and observations of nature.

This meditation on death highlights the importance of understanding and accepting mortality.

8.”Mornings at Blackwater” (1990)

In Mornings at Blackwater, Oliver explores the way in which nature’s details—dewdrops, the call of birds—provide a sense of grounding and connection to something larger than the individual.

/ You do not have to walk on your knees / For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting,” convey a sense of liberation, encouraging self-acceptance.

2.”The Summer Day” (1992)

This poem asks the essential question: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?” The poem reflects on the simple, profound pleasures of the present moment, urging readers to savor their time on Earth and appreciate the beauty around them.

3.”The Journey” (1992)

The Journey is a metaphorical exploration of personal transformation and self-discovery.

And speak it has, for the past five decades, to countless readers. She went on to publish more than fifteen collections of poetry, including Blue Horses (Penguin Press, 2014); A Thousand Mornings (Penguin Press, 2012); Swan: Poems and Prose Poems (Beacon Press, 2010); Red Bird (Beacon Press, 2008); Thirst (Beacon Press, 2006); Why I Wake Early (Beacon Press, 2004); Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays (Beacon Press, 2003); Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems (Mariner Books, 1999); West Wind (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997); White Pine (Harcourt, Inc., 1994); New and Selected Poems, Volume One (Beacon Press, 1992), which won the National Book Award; House of Light (Beacon Press, 1990), which won the Christopher Award and the L.

L. Winship/PEN New England Award; and American Primitive (Little, Brown, 1983), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize.

The first part of Oliver’s book-length poem The Leaf and the Cloud (Da Capo Press, 2000) was selected for inclusion in The Best American Poetry 1999 and the second part, “Work,” was selected for The Best American Poetry 2000.