Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver
Mary Oliveris an American poet who has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times described her as "far and away, this country's best-selling poet."...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth10 September 1935
CityMaple Heights, OH
CountryUnited States of America
rushing mind wonderful
And now I understand something so frightening &wonderful- how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar.
life-worth-living worth-living knows
I know many lives worth living.
ideas red thirst
I feel the terror of idleness, like a red thirst. Death isn't just an idea.
cherish force poetry-is
Poetry is a life-cherishing force.
dream hands singing
...Sometimes I dream that everything in the world is here, in my room, in a great closet, named and orderly, and I am here too, in front of it, hardly able to see for the flash and the brightness- and sometimes I am that madcap person clapping my hands and singing; and sometimes I am that quiet person down on my knees.
doe rooms lectures
The poem in which the reader does not feel himself or herself a participant is a lecture, listened to from an uncomfortable chair, in a stuffy room, inside a building.
lonely nature imagination
...whoever you are, not matter how lonely the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh & exciting - over & over announcing your place in the family of things.
pain reading heart
I want to write something so simply about love or about pain that even as you are reading you feel it and as you read you keep feeling it and though it be my story it will be common, though it be singular it will be known to you so that by the end you will think— no, you will realize— that it was all the while yourself arranging the words, that it was all the time words that you yourself, out of your heart had been saying.
love-you woods gone
If you have ever gone into the woods with me, I must love you very much.
healing whimsy whimsical
You must not ever stop being whimsical.
reading writing years
I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.
prayer thinking interesting
I think one thing is that prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful, and... almost involuntary in my life.
spiritual fun lovely
The world is: fun, and familiar, and healthful, and unbelievably refreshing, and lovely. And it is the theater of the spiritual; it is the multiform utterly obedient to a mystery.
growing-up children play
Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow up, and they work with a sorrow upon them. It's duty.