Mary Oliver was born and raised in Maple Hills Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. Abused as a child by her father and neglected by her mother, she commented ‘I was very little. But I had recurring nightmares; there’s damage.’[1] She described the setting: ‘It was very dark and broken house that I came from…. To this day I don’t care for the enclosure of buildings.’[2] Her retreat from a difficult home and family took her to the nearby woods, where she would build huts of sticks and grass and write poems. As a young poet, Oliver was deeply influenced by the Pulitzer prize-winner, Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), and briefly lived in Millay’s home, helping Norma Millay organize her sister’s papers. Oliver was notoriously reticent about her private life, but it was during this period that she met her long-time partner and photographer, Molly Malone Cook (1925-2005). The couple moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts, and the surrounding Cape Cod landscape had a marked influence on Oliver’s work. Her poetry is firmly rooted in it, and is known for its clear and revealing observations and evocative use of the natural world.
Her main theme was the meeting of the human and natural world, together with a sensitive awareness of transcendence in the interaction. This was her personal testimony: ‘It was a very bad childhood for everybody, every member of the household, not just myself, I think. And I escaped it, barely, with years of trouble. But I did find the entire world in looking for something. But I got saved by poetry. And I got saved by the beauty of the world.’[3] Mary Oliver also believed that ‘poetry wishes for a community. It’s a community ritual, certainly.’[4]
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.[5]
Although she was not a churchgoer there were several significant references and allusions to Biblical stories and Christian themes. These relate to nearly all the twelve Christian ‘Faith Markers’ which have shaped this selection. However the headlines are in no way intended to colonise the poet.[6] Most of the poems are taken from her own personal selection, Devotions (2017). In the intensity of her poetry, Mary Oliver searched beneath the accepted priorities of contemporary culture and reason to discover the insight and spiritual realism that is evident in all her writings. As Ruth Franklin concluded in her article in The New Yorker (20th November 2017): ‘She tends to use nature as a springboard to the sacred which is the beating heart of her work.’
…in spring there’s hope,
in fall the exquisite, necessary diminishing, in
winter I am as sleepy as any beast in its
leafy cage, but in summer there is
everywhere the luminous sprawl of gifts,
the hospitality of the Lord and my
inadequate answers as I row my beautiful, temporary body
through this water-lily world.[7]
- Our Father: Hallowed on Earth as in Heaven
I WAKE CLOSE TO MORNING
Why do people keep asking to see
God’s identity papers
When the darkness opening into morning
is more than enough?
Certainly any god might turn away in disgust.
Think of Sheba approaching
the kingdom of Solomon.
Do you think she had to ask,
‘Is this the place?’
From ‘Felicity’, 2015. Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, New York, Penguin, 2017, p. 3.
THE SUNFLOWERS
Come with me
into the field of sunflowers.
Their faces are burnished disks,
their dry spines
creak like ship masts,
their green leaves,
so heavy and many,
fill all the day with the sticky
sugars of the sun.
Come with me
to visit the sunflowers,
they are shy
but want to be friends;
they have wonderful stories
of when they were young-
the important weather,
the wandering crows.
Don’t be afraid
to ask the questions!
Their bright faces,
which follow the sun,
will listen, and all
those rows of seeds-
each one a new life!-
hope for a deeper acquaintance;
each of them, though it stands
in a crowd of many,
like a separate universe,
is lonely, the long work
of turning their lives
into a celebration
is not easy. Come
and let us talk with those modest faces,
the simple garment of leaves,
the coarse roots in the earth
so uprightly burning.
From ‘Dream Work’, 1986. Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, New York, Penguin, 2017, p. 361-362.
EVIDENCE
Beauty without purpose is beauty without virtue.
But all beautiful things, inherently, have this function –
to excite the viewers toward sublime thought.
Glory to the world, that good teacher.
From ‘Evidence’, 2009. Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, New York, Penguin, 2017, p. 80.
2 The Bible: Bestowed Word of God
LOGOS
Why worry about the loaves and the fishes?
If you say the right words, the wine expands.
If you say them with love
and the felt ferocity of that love
and the felt necessity of that love,
the fish explode into many.
Imagine him, speaking,
and don’t worry about what is reality,
or what is plain, or what is mysterious.
If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it is all those things.
Eat, drink, be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept, too, each spoken word
Spoken with love.
From ‘Why I awake early’, 2004. Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, New York, Penguin, 2017, p. 179.
- Jesus Christ: Crucified God in Person
THE POET THINKS ABOUT THE DONKEY
On the outskirts of Jerusalem
the donkey waited.
Not especially brave, or filled with understanding,
he stood and waited.
How horses, turned out into the meadow,
leap with delight!
How doves, released from their cages,
clatter away, slashed with sunlight!
But the donkey tied to a tree as usual, waited.
Then he let himself be led away.
Then he let the stranger mount….
From ‘Thirst’, 2006. Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, New York, Penguin, 2017, p. 130.
- Humanity: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless
OF THE EMPIRE
We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for a few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
From ‘Red Bird’, 2008. Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, New York, Penguin, 2017, p. 112.
- The Grace of God: Justifying and Converting
THE GIFT
Be still my soul, and steadfast.
Earth and heaven both are still watching
though time is draining from the clock
and your walk, that was confident and quick,
has become slow.
So be slow if you must, but let
the heart still play its true part.
Love still as once you loved, deeply,
and without patience. Let God and the world
know you are grateful
that the gift has been given.
From ‘Felicity’, 2015. Devotions: The selected Poems of Mary Oliver, New York, Penguin, 2017, p. 14.
- Christian Living: Progressive Christ-likeness
SIX RECOGNITIONS OF THE LORD. No. 5.
Oh, feed me this day, Holy Spirit, with
the fragrance of the fields and the
freshness of the oceans which you have
made, and help me to hear and to hold
in all dearness those exacting and wonderful
words of our Lord Jesus Christ, saying:
Follow me.
From ‘Thirst’, 2006,
Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, New York, Penguin, 2017, p. 127.
7. Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience
MYSTERIES, YES
Truly we live with mysteries too marvellous
to be understood….
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
‘Look!’ and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.
From ‘Evidence’, 2009. Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, New York, Penguin, 2017, p. 85.
ONE OR TWO THINGS
The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice: now,
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever,
which has nevertheless always been, like a sharp iron hoof,
at the center of my mind.
From ‘Dream Work’, 1986. Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, New York, Penguin, 2017, pp. 343-344.
- Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful
THE SUMMER DAY
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper…?
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
From ‘House of Light’, 1990. Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, New York, Penguin, 2017, p. 316
THE JOURNEY
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice-
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
Each voice cried.
but you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations-
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly,
recognised as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do-
determined to save
the only life you could save.
From ‘Dream Work’, 1986. Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, New York, Penguin, 2017, p. 349-350.
PRAYING
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
From ‘Thirst’, 2006. Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, New York, Penguin, 2017, p. 131.
- The Necessity of the Church
‘I was sent to Sunday school, as many kids are. And then I had trouble with the resurrection. So I would not join the church. But I was still probably more interested than many of the kids who did enter the church. It’s been one of the most important interests of my life and continues to be. And it doesn’t have to be Christianity….’
‘Mary Oliver: Listening to the World.’ Radio Interview with Krista Tippett, ‘On Being’, 5th February 2005. https://onbeing.org/programs/mary-oliver-listening-to-the-world/
- The Mission of God
STORAGE
When I moved from one house to another
there were many things I had no room
for. What does one do? I rented a storage
space. And filled it. Years passed.
Occasionally I went there and looked in,
but nothing happened, not a single
twinge of the heart.
As I grew older the things I cared
about grew fewer, but were more
important. So one day I undid the lock
and called the trash man. He took
everything.
I felt like the little donkey when
his burden is finally lifted. Things!
Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful
fire! More room in your heart for love,
for the trees! For the birds who own
nothing – the reason they can fly.
From ‘Felicity’, 2005. Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, New York, Penguin, 2017, p. 7.
- The Vision of Moral Justice
TO BEGIN WITH THE SWEET GRASS
What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.
Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.
That was many years ago.
Since then I have gone out from my confinements,
though with difficulty.
I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart.
I cast them out, I put them on the mush pile.
They will be nourishment somehow
(everything is nourishment somehow or another).
And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger.
And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
From ‘Evidence’, 2009. Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, New York, Penguin, 2017, p. 79.
- Glory: Now and Then, Here and There
GHOSTS
In the book of the earth it is written:
Nothing can die.
In the book of the Sioux it is written:
They have gone away into the earth to hide.
Nothing will coax them out again
But the people dancing.
From ‘American Primitive’, 1983. Devotions, The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, New York, Penguin, 2017, p.374.
WHEN DEATH COMES
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.
New and Selected Poems. Vol. 1, 1992. Devotions, The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, New York, Penguin, 2017, p. 285-286.
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[1] Interviewed by Maria Shriver, for a poetry edition of Oprah magazine, 2011, Cited by Rachel Syme, ‘Mary Oliver helped us to stay amazed’, The New Yorker, 19th January 2019.
[2] Cited by Ruth Franklin in The New Yorker: The Art of Praying, ’What Mary Oliver’s Critics Don’t Understand’, 27th November 2017.
[3] Mary Oliver: Listening to the World, ‘On Being’, Interviewed by Krista Tippett, 5th February 2015.
https://onbeing.org/programs/mary-oliver-listening-to-the-world/
[4] Cited by Rachel Syme in the above.
[5] ‘Wild Geese’, From Dream Work (1986), in Devotions, 20
[6] The headlines to the sections of this Faith Shaper’s verse derive from the compiler’s paper: ‘Faith Markers on the Evangelical Way: 1215-2021’. In no way are they intended to colonise this poet. They can be found on the Academia platform: www.oxford.academia.edu/IanBunting
[7] ‘Six Recognitions of the Lord’, No. 6, From Thirst (2006), in Devotions, 2017, pp. 127-128.
23.03.2026
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