Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver (1935–2019) was an American poet known for accessible, nature-centered verse that found wide popular readership.
Her work observes the natural world—birds, flowers, ponds, seasons—with careful attention, drawing spiritual and philosophical meaning from ordinary encounters: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
She won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award.
Her poems appear frequently in weddings, funerals, and graduation speeches.
- poetryMetrical literary composition
- wildNot domesticated or controlled
- geesePlural of goose
- grasshopperJumping insect, long legs
- devotionDeep, loyal commitment
summer day · quiet devotion · attention · walking · Cape Cod · woods · nature · natural world · Provincetown · pond · morning · prayer · stillness · wonder · dog · Percy · beloved · thresholds
- Nature PoetsWordsworth, Frost, Hopkins, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney
- Ohio WritersToni Morrison, James Thurber
- Pulitzer WinnersToni Morrison, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Harper Lee
- women's poetrywomen poets, female poets, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Maya Angelou
- Prose PoetsCharles Baudelaire, Gertrude Stein
- poetrypoem, poems, poetry, verse, verses
Mary OliverCharles Bukowski
Allen Ginsberg · Samuel Beckett · T.S. Eliot · Ezra Pound · Carl Sandburg
Mary OliverGertrude Stein
Mary OliverCharles Bukowski