Mary Oliver

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Mary Oliver

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born
September 10, 1935 in Maple Heights, OH, The United States

gender
female

website

genre


About this author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

“Mary Oliver. In a region that has produced most of the nation's poet laureates, it is risky to single out one fragile 71-year-old bard of Provincetown. But Mary Oliver, who won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 1983, is my choice for her joyous, accessible, intimate observations of the natural world. Her Wild Geese has become so popular it now graces posters in dorm rooms across the land. But don't hold that against her. Read almost anything in New and Selected Poems. She teaches us the profound act of paying attention—a living wonder that makes it possible to appreciate all the others.”
—Renée Loth, Boston Globe, Septe...more


Average rating: 4.31 · 13,703 ratings · 1,401 reviews · 44 distinct works
New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1
4.53 of 5 stars 4.53 avg rating — 2,382 ratings — published 1992 — 7 editions
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Thirst
4.32 of 5 stars 4.32 avg rating — 983 ratings — published 2006 — 5 editions
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American Primitive
4.34 of 5 stars 4.34 avg rating — 891 ratings2 editions
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A Poetry Handbook
3.99 of 5 stars 3.99 avg rating — 919 ratings — published 1994
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Why I Wake Early
4.36 of 5 stars 4.36 avg rating — 845 ratings — published 2004 — 4 editions
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New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2
4.56 of 5 stars 4.56 avg rating — 644 ratings — published 1992 — 4 editions
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Dream Work
4.47 of 5 stars 4.47 avg rating — 561 ratings — published 1986 — 2 editions
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Red Bird
4.39 of 5 stars 4.39 avg rating — 542 ratings5 editions
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House of Light
4.3 of 5 stars 4.30 avg rating — 421 ratings — published 1990 — 4 editions
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West Wind
4.23 of 5 stars 4.23 avg rating — 297 ratings — published 1997 — 3 editions
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More books by Mary Oliver…

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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

“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

“Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?”
Mary Oliver

Polls

Who is your favorite poet? (add to this list if needed)

 
  40 votes, 14.5%

 
  23 votes, 8.4%

Edgar Allan Poe (write-in)
 
  21 votes, 7.6%

Emily Dickinson
 
  16 votes, 5.8%

Robert Frost (write-in)
 
  15 votes, 5.5%

Sylvia Plath (write-in)
 
  14 votes, 5.1%

Pablo Neruda (write-in)
 
  11 votes, 4.0%

 
  8 votes, 2.9%

 
  7 votes, 2.5%

Walt Whitman (write-in)
 
  7 votes, 2.5%

 
  7 votes, 2.5%

william shakespear (write-in)
 
  6 votes, 2.2%

Rumi (write-in)
 
  6 votes, 2.2%

Rainer Maria Rilke (write-in)
 
  5 votes, 1.8%

T.S. Elliot (write-in)
 
  5 votes, 1.8%

William Blake (write-in)
 
  4 votes, 1.5%

Fernando Pessoa (write-in)
 
  4 votes, 1.5%

Dante (write-in)
 
  4 votes, 1.5%

Lord Alfred Tennyson (write-in)
 
  4 votes, 1.5%

D. H. Lawrence (write-in)
 
  4 votes, 1.5%

Dorothy Parker (write-in)
 
  4 votes, 1.5%

John Keats (write-in)
 
  3 votes, 1.1%

Federico García Lorca (write-in)
 
  3 votes, 1.1%

Charles Baudelaire (write-in)
 
  3 votes, 1.1%

anne sexton (write-in)
 
  3 votes, 1.1%

 
  3 votes, 1.1%

Seamus Heaney (write-in)
 
  2 votes, 0.7%

 
  2 votes, 0.7%

Hart Crane (write-in)
 
  2 votes, 0.7%

Dylan Thomas (write-in)
 
  2 votes, 0.7%

Andrea Gibson (write-in)
 
  2 votes, 0.7%

John Donne (write-in)
 
  2 votes, 0.7%

Wallace Stevens (write-in)
 
  2 votes, 0.7%

 
  2 votes, 0.7%

 
  2 votes, 0.7%

Ted Hughes (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

 
  1 vote, 0.4%

Stephen Crane (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

Jack Kerouac (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

Ellen Hopkins (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

Lewis Carroll (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

 
  1 vote, 0.4%

Geoffrey Chaucer (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

Al Berto (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

 
  1 vote, 0.4%

Dmitry Prigov (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

Wisława Szymborska (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

Mark Doty (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

Mario Benedetti (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

Percy Shelley (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

Arthur Rimbaud (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

Suheir Hammad (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

E.E. Cummings (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

Hiroyuki Nishigaki (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

Gwendolyn Brooks (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

Philip Levine (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

Rafał Wojaczek (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

Gérard de Nerval (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

A. Kamalei (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

 
  1 vote, 0.4%

cesar vallejo (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

Alexander Pope (write-in)
 
  1 vote, 0.4%

 
  0 votes, 0.0%

 
  0 votes, 0.0%

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