February 13, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
I just finished a Mary Oliver seminar which was hosted by the Academy of American Poets and taught by Lindsay Whalen. I appreciated Whalen’s historical insights into Oliver’s writing. Here are a few things that I love, admire, cherish about Mary Oliver’s poetry.
First, as Lindsay Whalen eloquently expressed in class, for Oliver, memories are attached not just to a moment in time but to a very physical place. Memories become trapped in a substance of some kind, almost elongated by things like a tree or snail or leaf that join into her lived experience. This beautiful three dimensionalizing of memory enchants me.
Another thing to love in Oliver’s poetry is the way that she blends heavy, existential threats with goodness and light. Like Shakespeare – who also loved contradictions (think “oh heavy feather,” etc.) – Oliver’s poem “White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field” turns the hunter, the bringer of death, into the bringer of light. As this white owl swoops down and grabs its prey, she says: “so I thought:/ maybe death/ isn’t darkness, after all,/ but so much light/ wrapping itself around us” (324). She watches the hunter hunt, facing a moment that many might rather avoid. Not only does she face it, becoming a witness, but she finds goodness and wonder in it.
“The White Owl Flies Into and Out of a Field” uses a first person voice, but a lot of Oliver’s poetry tries to remove the self altogether. For example, “Snakes in Winter” ushers a command which invites the reader into the poem. The language demands that we touch the mass of curled snakes. I love the potential of language itself in this poem. Are readers touching snakes through memory, through our minds, through the poem, or through language itself? Again, a snake pit might be an image that humans would rather avoid, yet Oliver makes it central. She notices how the snakes hibernate, breathe, curl, and simmer. The poet looks outward, appreciating the world in front of her.
Oliver knows the world’s more unsavory side too. Some of her poems which sit with discomfort are among my favorite. They transform the unpleasant into the meaningful. In “The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac” Oliver likens the cancer in her own body to a hunter who walks “the forest without a sound.” For Oliver, meaning comes from her connection to the outer world. So, this poem which hints at suffering and treatment and pain also inspires a fierce love of life. She divides this poem into four sections which moves from the cancer and into the outer world again. Section three speaks directly to the reader: “I know, you never intended to be in this world./ But you’re in it all the same. // So why not get started immediately. // I mean, belonging to it.” For Oliver, meaning is carved out of experience, painful and good.
Finally, I love the way that she encourages wonder and acceptance. “In Blackwater Woods” Oliver lists three required things to live in this world:
“to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.”
Her poems touch on the natural world, the divine, human frailty, human ability, honesty, curiosity, and openness. For these reasons, Mary Oliver is an inspiration to me.
Thanks to the Academy of American Poets and Lindsay Whalen for a wonderful seminar!
Photo credit: Shutterstock/ Piotr Krzeslak
