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
plan precious wild
Tell me, what is it you plan to dowith your one wild and precious life?
breathing
What can we dobut keep on breathing in and out,modest and willing, and in our places?
children earnestly people sorrow work
There is nothing better than work. Work is also play; children know that. Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow up, and they work with a sorrow upon them. It's duty.
sight depth asks
I don't ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depth of my seeing.
dream heart imagination
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
life responsibility giving
You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.
one-day
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began....
life heart rave
And I say to my heart: rave on.
life dream lying
The dream of my life is to lie down by a slow river and stare at the light in the trees - to learn something by being nothing
prayer blessed fall
I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. 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?
life travel breathing
Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
weed blue voice
Praying It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.
summer fall grief
How many mysteries have you seen in your lifetime? How many nets pulled full over the boat's side, each silver body ready or not falling into submission? How many roses in early summer uncurling above the pale sands then falling back in unfathomable willingness? And what can you say? Glory to the rose and the leaf, to the seed, to the silver fish. Glory to time and the wild fields, and to joy. And to grief's shock and torpor, its near swoon.
two fire ability-to-love
In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love and the ability to question. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us.