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Mary Oliver
Author profile
born
in Maple Heights, OH, The United States
September 10, 1935
gender
female
website
genre
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New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1
— published 1992 — 8 editions |
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American Primitive
— published 1983 — 2 editions |
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Thirst
— published 2006 — 5 editions |
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Why I Wake Early
— published 2004 — 4 editions |
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A Poetry Handbook
— published 1994 |
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New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2
— published 1992 — 5 editions |
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A Thousand Mornings
— published 2012 — 3 editions |
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Dream Work
— published 1986 — 2 editions |
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Red Bird
— 5 editions |
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House of Light
— published 1990 |
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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
Robert Frost
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Sylvia Plath
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Pablo Neruda
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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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Andrea Gibson
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Dylan Thomas
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John Donne
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Wallace Stevens
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Ted Hughes
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Jack Kerouac
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Stephen Crane
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Lewis Carroll
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Ellen Hopkins
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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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Arthur Rimbaud
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Alexander Pope
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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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