Nature Poetry Mary Oliver, Wallace Stevens

Mary Oliver Born 1935, in Maple Heights, Ohio

Oliver’s Personal Life She was heavily influenced by Edna St. Vincent Millay, a poet and playwright known for her feminist activism. She briefly lived in Millay’s home, helping her sister Norma Millay organize Millay’s papers. During this time Oliver met her long time partner, photographer Molly Malone Cook. The two lived together in Massachusetts until Cook’s death in 2005 The surrounding Cape Cod landscape had a large influence on Oliver’s work. Oliver is known for being a very private person, and has given very few interviews throughout her life. Preferred to let her work speak for itself

Focus of Oliver’s Poetry Tone of revelry for the beauty of the earth and deep appreciation of nature: “When it’s over, I want to say: all my life / I was a bride married to amazement. / I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.” (from “When Death Comes”) Themes of Oliver’s poetry: The intersection between the human and the natural world The limits of human consciousness and language in articulating such a meeting

Oliver’s time in Massachusetts The Bard of Provincetown Blackwater Pond is a part of a two mile stretch of fresh water ponds at Cape Cod’s tip, where most of Oliver’s poetry is set. Collection of her poetry entitled “Why I Wake Early” This is where she would explore early in the mornings to observe nature and to write.

Five A.M. in the Pinewoods I’d seen their hoofprints in the deep needles and knew they ended the long night under the pines, walking like two mute and beautiful women toward the deeper woods, so I got up in the dark and went there. They came slowly down the hill and looked at me sitting under the blue trees, shyly they stepped closer and stared from under their thick lashes... This is not a poem about a dream, though it could be....

In Blackwater Woods Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

Can the act of writing poetry be compared to nature? Wallace Stevens, a poet from the early 1900s, found inspiration in mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont and wrote “The Poem That Took The Place of a Mountain” based on his experience and relationship with Mt. Chocorua in New Hampshire.

The Poem That Took The Place of a Mountain There it was, word for word, The poem that took the place of a mountain. He breathed its oxygen, Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table. It reminded him how he had needed A place to go to in his own direction, How he had recomposed the pines, Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds, For the outlook that would be right, Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion: The exact rock where his inexactnesses Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged, Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea, Recognize his unique and solitary home.

Template There it was, word for word, The poem that took the place of a _________. An action you carry out at this place An object that you associate with this place What do you think about when you are at this place? Thoughts about the world, thoughts about your life. Do you associate this place with any lessons you’ve learned or ways you’ve grown/developed? Imagery about the physical characteristics of the place. You could try placing yourself in an active position here like Stevens “recomposing the pines” and “picking his way among clouds” Describe more thoughts you have at this place, actions you take at this place, or descriptions of this place. How does this place contribute to your feelings about the world or your personality? An image of you in this place and what it feels like. Similar to “Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea, Recognize his unique and solitary home.”