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Mary Oliver
Author profile
born
September 10, 1935
in Maple Heights, OH, The United States
gender
female
website
genre
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New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1
  4.53 avg rating — 2,382 ratings
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published
1992
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7 editions
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Thirst
 4.32 avg rating — 983 ratings
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published
2006
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5 editions
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American Primitive
4.34 avg rating — 891 ratings
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2 editions
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A Poetry Handbook
 3.99 avg rating — 919 ratings
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published
1994
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Why I Wake Early
4.36 avg rating — 845 ratings
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published
2004
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4 editions
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New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2
4.56 avg rating — 644 ratings
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published
1992
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4 editions
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Dream Work
4.47 avg rating — 561 ratings
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published
1986
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2 editions
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Red Bird
4.39 avg rating — 542 ratings
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5 editions
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House of Light
4.30 avg rating — 421 ratings
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published
1990
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4 editions
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West Wind
4.23 avg rating — 297 ratings
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published
1997
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3 editions
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“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems
with your one wild and precious life?”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
call to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
― Mary Oliver
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
call to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
― Mary Oliver
Polls
Who is your favorite poet? (add to this list if needed)
Edgar Allan Poe
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Emily Dickinson
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Walt Whitman
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william shakespear
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Rumi
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Rainer Maria Rilke
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T.S. Elliot
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William Blake
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Fernando Pessoa
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Dante
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Lord Alfred Tennyson
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D. H. Lawrence
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Dorothy Parker
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John Keats
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Federico García Lorca
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Charles Baudelaire
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anne sexton
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Seamus Heaney
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Hart Crane
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Dylan Thomas
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Andrea Gibson
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John Donne
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Wallace Stevens
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Ted Hughes
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Stephen Crane
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Jack Kerouac
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Ellen Hopkins
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Lewis Carroll
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Geoffrey Chaucer
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Al Berto
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Dmitry Prigov
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Wisława Szymborska
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Mark Doty
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Mario Benedetti
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Percy Shelley
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Arthur Rimbaud
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Suheir Hammad
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E.E. Cummings
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Hiroyuki Nishigaki
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Gwendolyn Brooks
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Philip Levine
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Rafał Wojaczek
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Gérard de Nerval
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A. Kamalei
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cesar vallejo
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Alexander Pope
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