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
love-yourself world special-education
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
able wanted know-how
Also I wanted to be able to love And we all know how that one goes, don't we? Slowly
nature tree
Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, Stay awhile.
details devotion renewal
You, too, can be carved anew by the details of your devotion.
how-to-love world this-world
There is only one question: / how to love this world.
names fire sunrise
Sunrise What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us? Call it whatever you want, it is happiness, it is another one of the ways to enter fire.
mistake world want
You want to cry aloud for your mistakes. But to tell the truth the world doesn't need any more of that sound.
rainy-day chance someday
Don't we all die someday and someday comes all too soon? What will you do with your own wild, glorious chance at this thing we call life.
how-precious-life-is done lasts
Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do With your one wild and precious life?
prayer attention how-precious-life-is
I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention...
summer running dark
When the blackberries hang swollen in the woods, in the brambles nobody owns, I spend all day among the high branches, reaching my ripped arms, thinking of nothing, cramming the black honey of summer into my mouth; all day my body accepts what it is. In the dark creeks that run by there is this thick paw of my life darting among the black bells, the leaves; there is this happy tongue.
voice world determined
...there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do -- determined to save the only life you could save.
humility mind glare
In the glare of your mind, be modest. And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.
despair wild-geese mines
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine