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
littles alive wanted
I wanted to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know, whoever I was, I was alive for a little while.
looks alive world
Look, I want to love this world as though it's the last chance I'm ever going to get to be alive and know it.
morning broken alive
it is a serious thing // just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world.
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.
spiritual order world
You have to be in the world to understand what the spiritual is about, and you have to be spiritual in order to truly be able to accept what the world is about.
writing wanted
I've always wanted to write poems and nothing else.
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.
art wilderness fine
Poetry is one of the original arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.
running thinking rivers
... the natural world is the old river that runs through everything, and I think poets will forever fish along its shores.
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.
feelings mind inquiring
A mind that is lively and inquiring, compassionate, curious, angry, full of music, full of feeling, is a mind full of possible poetry.
heart knowing burning
But how did you come burning down like a wild needle, knowing just where my heart was?