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
judging swim flow
So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray.
laughter giving-up crazy
Sometimes I spend all day trying to count the leaves on a single tree... Of course I have to give up, but by then I'm half crazy with the wonder of it--the abundance of the leaves, the quietness of the branches, the hopelessness of my effort. And I am in that delicious and important place, roaring with laughter, full of earth-praise.
work positivity attention
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
moments eternity
All eternity is in the moment.
spring thinking years
I don't know lots of things but I know this: next year when spring flows over the starting point I'll think I'm going to drown in the shimmering miles of it...
humble cherish heaviness
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
crafts poet interest
A poet's interest in craft never fades, of course.
dream song heart
Language is, in other words, not necessary, but voluntary. If it were necessary, it would have stayed simple; it would not agitate our hearts with ever-present loveliness and ever-cresting ambiguity; it would not dream, on its long white bones, of turning into song.
somewhere-else water want
It is the nature of stone to be satisfied. It is the nature of water to want to be somewhere else.
looks hook
I took one look and fell, hook and tumble.
adjectives-and-adverbs fifty cents
Every adjective and adverb is worth five cents. Every verb is worth fifty cents.
fifty feels forty
In my own work, I usually revise through forty or fifty drafts of a poem before I begin to feel content with it.
be-good exuberance
Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.
poetry verbs looks
Look for verbs of muscle, adjectives of exactitude.