Hello
Gentle Reader
Mary
Oliver was a Pulitzer Prize winning poet, and National Book Award Winner. Her poetry
was renowned for its accessibility and simplicity. These traits she endorsed
and often encouraged in her fellow poets, young and old. She didn’t believe
poetry should be a literary expression of ambiguity or obscurity, but rather a
masterful form built around the musicality of linguistics and striking detailed
observations of image and emotion. Poetry as a form was one of distilled
experiences and acute annotations of the world. Mary Oliver’s poetry was
renowned for its occupation of the natural world imbued with spiritual epiphanies.
Her work eschewed pretense and pomp, favoured by poets who are boastful vain
and ostentatious, in favour of a style that was noted for its subtlety, grace,
and simplistic—the three pillars of her poetry. Oliver’s poetry never required
seminars or conferences in order to decode or declassify any hidden meaning to
her work. Messages, meanings, themes, and thoughts were ever present and
readily available to all readers. Her poetry is renowned and often reserved as ‘natural,’
in preoccupation and provocation. Mary Oliver herself stated her two greatest
friends and experiences in her childhood were: nature and dead poets. In her
poetry she continued to show both bewilderment and astonishment to the natural
world. No American poet of this age has a great fondness for frogs, worms,
goats, bears, cats, horses, dogs, or sharks quite like Mary Oliver. She treated
these life forms as characters, not as images or metaphors (though they did
have their metaphorical connotations). She steadily observed the passage of
time and the season as a natural wonder. Between poet and reader her poems are
conversations. She shares her observations of a quaint but startling world that
is both progressive and resiliently conservative in its process. She expresses
the plight of the animal condition, which meres the human condition riddled
with its own fears and acceptance of the dwindling days and the end. As a poet
who has continually received continual acknowledgement and honours, Mary Oliver
always appeared grateful but inherently indifferent. Prizes, titles, and awards
where all fine and appreciated, but even without them there was always a sense
she would continue on her path with resilience and zeal. Critical reception was
always received, but critics often missed the point of the appreciative efforts
of her work. After all: Mary Oliver was not a difficult poet; but her lack of difficulty,
her open communicative style, and conversational approach was what made her loved
and admired by her readers. In an interview with National Public Radio, Mary
Oliver made the greatest statement with regards to poetry: “Poetry, to be
understood, must be clear.” Which is perhaps why she was admired and adored by
those who read her work, her work was clear, graceful, and accessible. It was
not riddled with pomp or ceremony, it was not ostentatious or vain, it never
boasted the clever intellect of the writer.
Rest
in Peace, Mary Oliver. May your words live on.
Thank-you
For Reading Gentle Reader
Take
Care
And
As Always
Stay
Well Read
M.
Mary
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