The poem in which the reader does not feel himself or herself a participant is a lecture, listened to from an uncomfortable… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
I worked privately, and sometimes I feel that might be better for poets than the kind of social workshop gathering. My school… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
In my own work, I usually revise through forty or fifty drafts of a poem before I begin to feel content with… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
And it is exceedingly short, his galloping life. Dogs die so soon. I have my stories of that grief, no doubt many… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
On poetry: Everyone wants to know what it means. But nobody is asking, How does it feel? — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
I feel the terror of idleness, like a red thirst. Death isn't just an idea. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
I want to write something so simply about love or about pain that even as you are reading you feel it and… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Rhythm is one of the most powerful of pleasures, and when we feel a pleasurable rhythm we hope it will continue. When… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Belief isn't always easy. But this much I have learned--- if not enough else--- to live with my eyes open. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love and the ability to question. Which are, at the same time, the… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Poetry is one of the original arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
The dream of my life is to lie down by a slow river and stare at the light in the trees - to learn… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“All important ideas must include the trees, the mountains, and the rivers. • To understand many things you must reach out of your own condition.” — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“Sometimes I think, were I just a little rougher made, I would go altogether to the woods—to my work entirely, and solitude, a few… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“First Snow The snow began here this morning and all day continued, its white rhetoric everywhere calling us back to why, how, whence such beauty… — mary oliver Copy Share Image
“What can I say that I have not said before? So I’ll say it again. The leaf has a song in it. Stone is… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
There is nothing better than work. Work is also play; children know that. Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
