Rachel A. Hicks
April 8,2017
Poetry Essay: Mary Oliver
When one writes poetry they tend to write on subjects they feel strongly about and they turn those feelings into something beautiful. Mary Oliver uses the theme of nature in most, if not all, of her work to symbolize her passion for the outside, her overall questions and feelings about life itself.
Mary Oliver went to two separate colleges yet never got a degree, she was very infatuated with poet Edna St. Vincent Millay growing up. She then found love and moved to a place called Provincetown, which is where she pulled a lot of nature's beauty from after claiming to fall in love with that place and it's amazing surroundings. She's always had a thing for nature and which is why she uses it to symbolize different concepts of life in her poems.
Mary Oliver's poem, "I Worried", talks about her own struggles with worrying about every little thing in life. She uses imagery to help explain ways she worried more about things she couldn't change than actually living her life solely for herself, "I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers flow in the right direction, will the earth turn as it was taught, and if not how shall I correct it?". Her tone is very sympathetic towards all the little details in "nature" that she's …show more content…
She questions in the poem "who made the world? Who made the swan and the black bear? who made the grasshopper?" She uses the swan, the black bear, and the grasshopper to overall represent life as a whole. She continues on by saying " I don't know exactly what prayer is. I do know how to pay attention..." Which goes into her religious questioning. Mary Oliver is believed to have no set faith and is a homosexual, many think that can be a reasoning behind a lot of her poems' question of
April 8,2017
Poetry Essay: Mary Oliver
When one writes poetry they tend to write on subjects they feel strongly about and they turn those feelings into something beautiful. Mary Oliver uses the theme of nature in most, if not all, of her work to symbolize her passion for the outside, her overall questions and feelings about life itself.
Mary Oliver went to two separate colleges yet never got a degree, she was very infatuated with poet Edna St. Vincent Millay growing up. She then found love and moved to a place called Provincetown, which is where she pulled a lot of nature's beauty from after claiming to fall in love with that place and it's amazing surroundings. She's always had a thing for nature and which is why she uses it to symbolize different concepts of life in her poems.
Mary Oliver's poem, "I Worried", talks about her own struggles with worrying about every little thing in life. She uses imagery to help explain ways she worried more about things she couldn't change than actually living her life solely for herself, "I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers flow in the right direction, will the earth turn as it was taught, and if not how shall I correct it?". Her tone is very sympathetic towards all the little details in "nature" that she's …show more content…
She questions in the poem "who made the world? Who made the swan and the black bear? who made the grasshopper?" She uses the swan, the black bear, and the grasshopper to overall represent life as a whole. She continues on by saying " I don't know exactly what prayer is. I do know how to pay attention..." Which goes into her religious questioning. Mary Oliver is believed to have no set faith and is a homosexual, many think that can be a reasoning behind a lot of her poems' question of