“Poem (the spirit likes to dress up) The spirit likes to dress up like this: ten fingers, ten toes, shoulders, and all… — 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
I learn a lot about my poems when I read them by the way people respond to them. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“This is a poem about death, about the heart blanching in its fold of shadows because it knows someday it will be… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“I mean, by such flightiness, something that feels unsatisfied at the center of my life — that makes me shaky, fickle, inquisitive,… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“Now the fire rises and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red roses of flame.” — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“Certainly imagery can be gleaned from the industrial world — what do Blake's "dark Satanic Mills," for example, owe to the natural… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“Love Sorrow Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must take care of what has been given. Brush her hair, help… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“Percy and Books Percy does not like it when I read a book. He puts his face over the top of it,… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
... to write well it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“Dogfish I wanted The past to go away, I wanted To leave it, like another country; I wanted My life to close,… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“The Journey One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“Have I experienced happiness with sufficient gratitude? Have I endured loneliness with grace?” — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work. — 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
I would rather write poems than prose, any day, any place. Yet each has its own force. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“When it over, I want to say:all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was a bridegroom, taking the… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“If I had another life I would want to spend it all on some unstinting happiness. I would be a fox, or… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“These days many poets live in cities, or at least in suburbs, and the natural world grows ever more distant from our… — 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
