DOCSLIB.ORG

Mary Oliver Was Born September 10Th, 1935 in Maple Heights, Ohio, a Semi-Rural Suburb of Cleveland

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Mary Oliver Was Born September 10Th, 1935 in Maple Heights, Ohio, a Semi-Rural Suburb of Cleveland MaryMary OliverOliver Presentation by Sarah Vesel General Biographical Information Mary Oliver was born September 10th, 1935 in Maple Heights, Ohio, a semi-rural suburb of Cleveland. Her father was Edward William, a social studies teacher and athletics coach in the Cleveland public schools, and Helen M. V. Oliver her mother. At 14, she began writing poetry. At 17, She lived for several years at the home of Edna St. Vincent Millay in Austerlitz, upper New York state, companion to the late Pulitzer Prize- winning poet’s sister Norma Millay and assisted with organizing the late poet's papers. Oliver attended both Ohio State University and Vassar College briefly in the mid-1950s, but received no degree. Personal Life Upon return to Austerlitz in the late ’50s, she met photographer Molly Malone Cook. For more than forty years, Cook and Oliver made their home together, largely in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where they lived until Cook’s death in 2005. Oliver lived in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the inspiration for much of her work. She is an avid walker, taking in nature as she walks in the woods around her home; her poems are filled with imagery from her daily walks near her home. Oliver values her privacy, and doesn’t do many interviews, leaving her work to speak for itself. The Work Itself Mary Oliver's poetry is established in memories of Ohio and her adopted home of New England, setting most of her poetry in and around Provincetown since she moved there in the 1960’s. Influences in her writing include Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Rumi, and James Wright. Known for her clear and moving observances of the natural world, her creativity is stirred by nature; her poems are filled with imagery from her daily walks near her home. Her main themes throughout her writing conserves the intersection between the human and the natural world, as well as the limits of human consciousness and language in articulating such a meeting. Behind the scenes Interview with Maria Shriver in 2013 On Being with Krista Tippett February 2015 1965 . No Voyage and Other Poems 1972 . The River Styx, Ohio, and Other Poems 1979 . Twelve Moons All of 1983 . American Primitive (Pulitzer Prize) Mary 1986 . Dream Work 1990 . House of Light Oliver’s 1992 . New and Selected Poems, Volume One (National Book Award) 1994 . White Pine Poetry 1997 . West Wind 2000 . The Leaf and the Cloud 2002 . What Do We Know 2003 . Owls and Other Fantasies 2004 . Why I Wake Early . Blue Iris . Wild Geese 2005 . New and Selected Poems, Volume Two 2006 . Thirst 2008 . Red Bird . The Truro Bear and Other Adventures 2009 . Evidence 2010 . Swan 2012 . A Thousand Mornings 2013 . Dog Songs All of Mary 1978 . The Night Traveler Oliver’s . Sleeping in the Forest 1980 . Provincetown other 1988 . (Author of introduction) Frank Gaspar, Holyoke works 1994 . A Poetry Handbook (including 1995 . Blue Pastures prose and 1998 . Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and audio) Reading Metrical Verse 1999 . Winter Hours 2004 . Long Life: Essays and Other Writings 2006 . (Audio CD) At Blackwater Pond: Mary Oliver Reads Mary Oliver 2007 . Our World, with photographs by Molly Malone Cook 2010 . (Audio CD) Many Miles: Mary Oliver Reads Mary Oliver Awards accomplishing her Professional Life (continued) Her fourth book, American Primitive, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984. Awards on poetry: She also received the Shelley Memorial Award; a Guggenheim Fellowship; an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Achievement Award; the Christopher Award and the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award for House of Light; the National Book Award for New and Selected Poems; a Lannan Foundation Literary Award; and the New England Booksellers Association Award for Literary Excellence. Prose published in many noted periodicals: essays have appeared in Best American Essays 1996, 1998, 2001; the Anchor Essay Annual 1998, as well as Orion, Onearth and other periodicals. Oliver was editor of Best American Essays 2009. Awards accomplishing her Professional Life Oliver’s works in education: her books on the craft of poetry, A Poetry Handbook and Rules for the Dance, are used widely in writing programs. She has led workshops at various colleges and universities, and held residencies at Case Western Reserve University, Bucknell University, University of Cincinnati, and Sweet Briar College. From 1995, for five years, she held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College. She is an acclaimed reader and has read in practically every state as well as other countries. Awarded Honorary Doctorates: The Art Institute of Boston (1998), Dartmouth College (2007) and Tufts University (2008). Quotes Starlings in Winter ↓ Evidence ↑ ↑ “The Summer Day” ← “What I Have Learned So Far” Mary Oliver is now living in southern Florida waking up to see the sun, standing at her front door with notebook in hand, walking and praying, until she finds something to write about. At age 80, she just released her latest book of poetry, Felicity. Resources "Behind the Scenes with Maria Shriver and Poet Mary Oliver." Oprah.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2015. "Google Images." Google Images. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2015. "Mary Oliver." Mary Oliver About Mary Oliver Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Nov. 2015. "Mary Oliver." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, 2010. Web. 09 Nov. 2015. “Mary Oliver.” The Norton Anthology American Literature. Eds. Jerome Klinkowitz and Patricia B.Wallace. Vol. E: Literature Since 1945. 7th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. 2792-2794. Print. 3 vols. Oliver, Mary. "Transcript for Mary Oliver — Listening to the World." Interview by Krista Tippet. On Being with Krista Tippett. N.p., 5 Feb. 2015. Web. 9 Nov. 2015. <http://www.onbeing.org/program/mary-oliver- listening-to-the-world/transcript/7271>. .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Five Kingdoms
    University of Central Florida STARS Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 2008 Five Kingdoms Kelle Groom University of Central Florida Part of the Creative Writing Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Masters Thesis (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STARS Citation Groom, Kelle, "Five Kingdoms" (2008). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019. 3519. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/3519 FIVE KINGDOMS by KELLE GROOM M.A. University of Central Florida, 1995 B.A. University of Central Florida, 1989 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing/Poetry in the Department of English in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Fall Term 2008 Major Professor: Don Stap © 2008 Kelle Groom ii ABSTRACT GROOM, KELLE . Five Kingdoms. (Under the direction of Don Stap.) Five Kingdoms is a collection of 55 poems in three sections. The title refers to the five kingdoms of life, encompassing every living thing. Section I explores political themes and addresses subjects that reach across a broad expanse of time—from the oldest bones of a child and the oldest map of the world to the bombing of Fallujah in the current Iraq war. Connections between physical and metaphysical worlds are examined.
    [Show full text]
  • The Return to “The Child”
    THE RETURN TO “THE CHILD”: NATURE, LANGUAGE AND THE SENSING BODY IN THE POETRY OF MARY OLIVER A Thesis Submitted to the Committee on Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Science TRENT UNIVERSITY Peterborough, Ontario, Canada © Copyright by Erin Holtz Braeckman 2013 English (Public Texts) M.A. Graduate Program September 2013 ABSTRACT The Return to “The Child”: Nature, Language and the Sensing Body in the Poetry of Mary Oliver Erin Holtz Braeckman Despite – or perhaps because of – her popularity as a best-selling poet, the work of Mary Oliver has been minimized and marginalized within the academy. Nevertheless, Oliver’s readership is an expansive and devout one made up of a wired yet insular North American public in search of reconnecting with the natural world. I propose that through Oliver’s poetry readers access the affective, sensory responses to nature first encountered during childhood. This return to “the child” is deliberately used by various publics to share communal goals. Drawing from such frameworks as ecocritical and trauma theory, I explore environmental memory, ecstatic places, and the sensuousness of nature and language to consider ways in which diverse publics claim and use Oliver’s work. I provide a close reading of selections of Oliver’s poems to argue that her work’s appeal speaks to a revived perception of the necessity of nature to the human spirit Keywords: Mary Oliver, Nature Poetry, Poetry Therapy, Ecstatic Places, Environmental Memory, Language, Childhood, Senses, Attentiveness. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS “I would love to live Like a river flows, Carried by the surprise Of its own unfolding” – John O’Donohue The unfolding of this thesis is one I owe to many people in my life – both past and present.
    [Show full text]
  • 2010 Advertising Rates
    !"#$%&'%()*$+,%-)+$".*'$/ Founded in 1959, Poetry Northwest is one of the nation’s most prestigious magazines devoted to poetry. We’ve published many of the most important poets of the past forty years, including Nobel laureates Harold Pinter & Czeslaw Milosz, Pulitzer Prize winners John Berryman, Stanley Kunitz, Charles Wright, Mary Oliver, Richard Wilber, James Wright, & Theodore Roethke, & National Book Award winners William Stafford, Anne Sexton, Marilyn Hacker, & C.K. Williams--all alongside new, emerging, & established poets. 2010 advertising rates !"#$%0#1*'%()*$+,%-)+$".*'$%')%23&42*/ Poetry Northwest features the finest poetry by writers from all over. But that’s not all. Book reviews, as well as essays by and about poets, & artists & nonartists in other disciplines (as their work relates to poetry), are included. The magazine aims to bridge the worlds of poetry & prose, & other arts, in an exciting new fashion, thereby reaching a diverse and growing community of writers and lovers of the literary arts. Everett Community College 2000 Tower Street Everett, WA 98201 Everett, WA 98201 www.poetrynw.org 2000 Tower Street 425-388-9395 Everett Community College !"#$%&'("%$)*#+$',+'-./01 2010 advertising rates Hailed in The Washington Post by former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky as “very impressive,” the new Poetry Northwest has increased circulation over 400% since Volume 1, Number back insde full 2/3 1/2 1/3 1/4 1/6 1 of the new series went to press in March 2006. cover cover page page page page page page Our mission is to curate major poets and writers alongside unknown and emerging ones & to Two-Issue Purchase $750 670 600 450 360 300 220 175 establish a dialogue between poetry & the other arts & civic life.
    [Show full text]
  • English 3150: Intermediate Poetry Workshop University of North Texas Spring 2016 3150.001 TR 12:30-1:50 Pm AUDB 201
    English 3150: Intermediate Poetry Workshop University of North Texas Spring 2016 3150.001 TR 12:30-1:50 pm AUDB 201 Dr. Anne Keefe Email: [email protected] Office: LANG 408A Office Hours: TR 8:15-9:15 am W 1-2 pm “It is the pleasure of the workshop that everyone there gets to be a part of such moments of sweetness, when there appears at last a poem that is fine and shapely, where before there was only struggle, and the tangled knot of words. We all partake, then, a little, of the miracle, that is made not only of luck and inspiration and even happenstance, but of those other matters too— technical knowledge and diligent work—matters that are less interesting perhaps, but altogether essential, for such things support the ineffable and moving light of the poem: they are the bedrock of the river.” --Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook Description This course is an intermediate level workshop focusing on the craft of poetry writing. We will engage the art of poetry through technical exercises in sound, meter, form, image, and voice. Structured in a workshop environment, the class discussion will center on student-created texts, with supplemental readings from contemporary poets, and culminate with a final portfolio of revised work. Required Texts Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry (ISBN: 9780156724005) Additional course readings will be provided in our course reader, which I will distribute on the first day of class, or as handouts. Electronic versions of all readings will also posted on our Blackboard site.
    [Show full text]
  • AP Poetry Prompts with the Poems
    MsEffie’s List of Poetry Essay Prompts for Advanced Placement® English Literature Exams, 1970-2019* *Advanced Placement® is a trademark registered by the College Board, which is not affiliated with, and does not endorse, this website. Each poem is included in the following prompts, printed on separate pages for better use in the classroom. None of the prompts are original to me, but are Advanced Placement® English Literature and Composition Exam prompts. This is my best effort to comply with College Board’s use requirements. 1970 Poem: “Elegy for Jane” (Theodore Roethke) Prompt: Write an essay in which you describe the speaker’s attitude toward his former student, Jane. Elegy for Jane by Theodore Roethke I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils; And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile; And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her, And she balanced in the delight of her thought, 5 A wren, happy, tail into the wind, Her song trembling the twigs and small branches. The shade sang with her; The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing, And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose. 10 Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth, Even a father could not find her: Scraping her cheek against straw, Stirring the clearest water. My sparrow, you are not here, 15 Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow. The sides of wet stones cannot console me, Nor the moss, wound with the last light. If only I could nudge you from this sleep, My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon.
    [Show full text]
  • Daniel Tobin from This Broken Symmetry (Simone Weil, 1943-1909)
    Daniel Tobin from This Broken Symmetry (Simone Weil, 1943-1909) (Rio Ebro) After turning away from the rearguard of Paris, the safe House of her pacifism, with her parents following, afraid She will do something silly, after descending with the militia Through Lerida into Aragon to the banks of the Ebro To take up her rifle there, her comrades at target practice Fleeing anywhere near her line of fire (Lord deliver us From mousey women); after crossing to the other side Where Phalangists wait in this war without prisoners “For if one is captured, one is dead,” she hugs ground Only to look up, stretched out on her back as the spitfire Flies past on reconnaissance, thinking she will be caught, And sees nothing other than the increase of blue sky, This “infinity of perfect beauties, of all things that were Or will be,” and looks for an instant “beyond the veil To the real presence,” objectless, adoring the distance (Though “all the horrors of this world are like the folds Imposed on waves by gravity”) between God and God, Until the stooping man one thinks one sees on the road At dusk reveals a tree, and the voices heard just leaves Rustling on Los Picos des Tres Maras where the river begins — Before the bivouacs resume and she burns herself with oil, Before her comrades who will fight and die carry her out, Before her parents who did not expect to see her again See her again, arrived safely, smiling, radiant: “Here I am.” 96 Alabama Literary Review Brand Brightly vested in their loose smocks, the ebullient troop sways rhythmically onto the floor, their gold drums strapped before them around their waists.
    [Show full text]
  • Plants in Contemporary Poetry: Ecocriticism and the Botanical
    Plants in Contemporary Poetry Examining how poets engage with and mediate botanical life, Plants in Contemporary Poetry affords a glimpse into the ontologies, epis- temologies, and semiospheres of flora and, by extension, the natural world. Highlighting the botanical obsessions of seminal poets writing in English today, the book calls attention to the role of language in de- constructing the cultural codes that limit an understanding of plants as intelligent beings. Ryan argues that, as poetic thought harmonizes with vegetality, writers gain direct knowledge of, and profound inspiration from, the botanical world. Plants in Contemporary Poetry provides a timely intervention in the prevailing tendency of ecocritical scholarship to date to examine animal, rather than plant, subjectivities and life- worlds. A sensuous return to vegetal being is actualized in this study through a focus on the contemporary poetries of Australia, England, and the United States. The lively disquisition traverses a cross section of contemporary poetic genres from confessionalism and experimentalism to radical pastoralism and ecopoetry. Through readings of eight poets, including Louise Glück, Les Murray, Mary Oliver, and Alice Oswald, Plants in Contemporary Poetry centers on the idea of the botanical imagination and proposes a unique conceptual model the author calls vegetal dialectics. Drawing from developments in neuro-botany and contributing to the area of critical plant studies, the book also develops phytocriticism as a method for responding to the lack of attention to plants in ecocriticism, ecopoetics, and the environmental humanities. This ground-breaking study reminds readers that poetic imagination is as important as scientific rationality to appreciating the mysteries of plants on an increasingly imperiled planet.
    [Show full text]
  • Wild Geese: Wendell Berry/Mary Oliver
    Wild Geese: Wendell Berry/Mary Oliver The Wild Geese Wendell Berry, 1934- Horseback on Sunday morning, harvest over, we taste persimmon and wild grape, sharp sweet of summer’s end. In time’s maze over fall fields, we name names that went west from here, names that rest on graves. We open a persimmon seed to find the tree that stands in promise, pale, in the seed’s marrow. Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear, in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here. Wild Geese Mary Oliver, 1935- 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, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
    [Show full text]
  • Mary Oliver and Jack Gilbert
    Book Notes: Reading in the Time of Coronavirus By Jefferson Scholar-in-Residence Dr. Andrew Roth Mary Oliver New and Selected Poems. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992). Jack Gilbert Collected Poems. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012). “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. When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder If I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.” “When Death Comes” Mary Oliver in New and Selected Poems, pp. 10-11 This week in Book Notes: Reading in the Time of Coronavirus I want – I almost said ‘to take a side trip’ – to set aside history, particularly history since 1968, to visit the real. Which would seem to imply that we live in the unreal, whilst all the time just over there somewhere the real is going about its business whether we attend to it or not. And, it just might be. Those who seek to live in the real and occasionally report back to us are called poets. Two of the most sensitive reporters of the real – poets – of recent generations are Mary Oliver and Jack Gilbert. Now coupling Mary Oliver and Jack Gilbert is, for many reasons, indeed, an odd coupling, but they share this: they were both acutely alive to the present and the shimmering real.
    [Show full text]
  • Getting Into Poetry
    Middletown Thrall Library Reference Department Presents Getting into… If you’re an avid reader of poetry, you need no further encouragement: you know a few carefully selected words can express extraordinary and beautiful ideas. You are also likely to know that many of our most important, influential, and imaginative writings – from the earliest times through the present – are, if not poems, rather poetic. If, on the other hand, you tend to avoid poetry, you might not realize what you are missing. Perhaps your first encounters with poetry were frustrating, a struggle to determine what a poem was saying or might have meant. Whatever your reasons for staying away, we encourage you to discover – or rediscover – the promise, profundity, and powers of poetry. Why? There are many good reasons to read poetry. There is the sheer enjoyment of seeing words (and hearing them as you read a poem aloud) come together to create intriguing impressions, fascinating descriptions, sounds, rhythms – music! Poetry can be very entertaining as well! Poetry sparks imagination, dares you to see things in new light, and helps to reveal truths about ourselves and our world. One poem can mean many things to different persons: interpretations can make poems come alive, affect and inspire us in unexpected ways. Some Poetry Concepts Worth Learning… Formal Verse – Poems adhering to certain rhythms, rhymes, and rules (such as a Sonnet – see below). Free Verse – Poems that tend to follow no particular set of rules or rhymes. Words can be arranged any number of ways. Haiku – These very short meditative poems are usually about nature, run three lines long, and can speak volumes! Metaphor – Something or someone equated with something else, as in “Juliet is the sun” or “All the world’s a stage.” Simile – When something or someone is likened to something else, as in “My love is like a red, red rose.” Sonnet – A classic form of poetry, usually 14 lines long, with lines that rhyme in a certain pattern (a rhyme scheme).
    [Show full text]
  • Aaa Some Questions You Might Ask Is
    Some Questions You Might Ask Is the soul solid, like iron? Or is it tender and breakable, like the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl? Who has it, and who doesn’t? I keep looking around me. The face of the moose is as sad as the face of Jesus. The swan opens her white wings slowly. In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness. One question leads to another. Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg? Like the eye of a hummingbird? Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop? Why should I have it, and not the anteater who loves her children? Why should I have it, and not the camel? Come to think of it, what about the maple trees? What about the blue iris? What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight? What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves? What about the grass? Mary Oliver1 Reflections It is a poem full of questions. Who is it we are asking? Is it really an answer we seek? Which of these things around us is sacred? Who here is the holy one? If you have been reading Wellspring for these three years or more, you might have noticed that Mary Oliver’s work appears at least once every few weeks. Often, a poem of her strikes me as so searingly 1 “Some Questions You Might Ask” by Mary Oliver from House of Light, Beacon Press. Used by permission. perfect—the perfect image in the perfect season at the perfect hour—that I wonder what I could possibly say that poetry does not say best itself.
    [Show full text]
  • The Life-Saving, Ecstatic Poetry of Mary Oliver” 26 April 2020 Frederickuu.Org
    “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”: The Life-saving, Ecstatic Poetry of Mary Oliver” 26 April 2020 frederickuu.org Mary Oliver (1935 – 2019) has been called “America’s most beloved poet” (The New Yorker), and she has long been a favorite of many UUs. In 2006, Oliver delivered the Ware Lecture at our annual UU General Assembly. She read many wonderful poems during that hourlong presentation, and toward the end she made her way around to one of the poems that many people had been waiting for all night: “Wild Geese.” She introduced it as “an old, old poem everybody wants me to read—so I'll do it." Mary Oliver wrote “Wild Geese” in 1986. As you read, I invite you to notice if a particular word or phrase resonates with you: 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. 1 of 8 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, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
    [Show full text]