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
eye belief enough
Belief isn't always easy. But this much I have learned--- if not enough else--- to live with my eyes open.
perfect coats boots
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? / Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?
children want fields
And I do not want anymore to be useful, to be docile, to lead / children out of the fields into the text / of civility, to teach them that they are (they are not) better than the grass.
world weight want
Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled---to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.
believe mountain world
Wherever I am, the world comes after me. It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it. Now I understand why the old poets of China went so far and high into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.
attitude blessed needs
Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.
art believe imagination
I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us. We don't have to rely totally on experience if we can do things in our imagination.... It's the only way in which you can live more lives than your own. You can escape your own time, your own sensibility, your own narrowness of vision.
ideas doubt wonderful
We can know a lot. And still, no doubt, there are rash and wonderful ideas brewing somewhere; there are many surprises yet to come.
world want this-world
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
serendipity grace luck
You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.
stars fall snow
Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dak trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more the prettiness.
blue sunflower world
My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums...
fire wings messengers
Every word is a messenger. Some have wings; some are filled with fire; some are filled with death.
despair wild-geese mines
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine