Poem Quotes by Mary Oliver

“Now the fire rises and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red roses of flame.”

— Mary Oliver

Maybe the world, without us, is the real poem.

— Mary Oliver

I always feel that whatever isn't necessary shouldn't be in a poem.

— Mary Oliver

The language of the poem is the language of particulars.

— Mary Oliver

“We did not know she was sick, but she has come to the fence, walking like a woman who is balancing a…

— Mary Oliver

“And then I feel the sun itself as it blazes over the hills, like a million flowers on fire -- clearly I'm…

— Mary Oliver

“The poem was made not just to exist, but to speak—to be company. It was everything that was needed, when everything was…

— Mary Oliver

Writing a poem ... is a kind of possible love affair between something like the heart (that courageous but also shy factory…

— Mary Oliver

“Of course! the path to heaven doesn't lie down in flat miles. It's in the imagination with which you perceive this world,…

— Mary Oliver

The poem in which the reader does not feel himself or herself a participant is a lecture, listened to from an uncomfortable…

— Mary Oliver

“Now of all voyagers I remember, who among them Did not board ship with grief among their maps?”

— Mary Oliver

“from the poem Hum, Hum The resurrection of the morning. The mystery of the night. The hummingbird's wings. The excitement of thunder.…

— Mary Oliver

“The salamanders, like tiny birds, locked into formation, fly down into the endless mysteries of the transforming water, and how could anyone…

— Mary Oliver

“That Little Beast That pretty little beast, a poem, has a mind of its own. Sometimes I want it to crave apples…

— Mary Oliver

“This is a poem about death, about the heart blanching in its fold of shadows because it knows someday it will be…

— Mary Oliver

“DAISIES It is possible, I suppose that sometime we will learn everything there is to learn: what the world is, for example,…

— Mary Oliver