For over four decades, Mary Oliver”s unique voice has been a part of the chorus of American Contemporary poetry. Born in 1935, Oliver was not yet 30 when her first book of poetry was published. Over the decades, Oliver”s poetry has won many awards, including the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for her book, American Primitive. She”s published nearly two dozen volumes of poetry in that time, including Why I Wake Early (Beacon Press, 2004); Owls and Other Fantasies : Poems and Essays (2003); Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems (1999); West Wind (1997); White Pine (1994); New and Selected Poems (1992), which won the National Book award; House of Light (1990), which won the Christopher Award and the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award. In addition to her poetry, Oliver”s work includes books about poetry and essays about life. Her A Poetry Handbook is one of the standard poetic reference books, as is her book Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Reading and Writing Metrical Verse. Her work has been included in Best American Poetry 1999 and Best American Poetry 2000. Oliver”s other honors include an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award, a Lannan Literary Award, the Poetry Society of America”s Shelley Memorial Prize and Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Oliver”s poetry is often about nature, particularly about what she sees around her in her home in Provincetown, but to call her a “nature poet” is to do her work a disservice. Oliver”s themes are humanity, and love and mortality and death, wrapped up in tiny morsels of moments, slices of time when an owl dives and cleanly takes his prey, or a snake does not avoid the wheels of an oncoming car. In a 1993 critique, Robin Riley Fast wrote, ” her moments of transcendence arise organically from the realities of swamp, pond, woods and shore.” It is that transcendant quality that makes Oliver”s poetry luminous, gives it a unique voice that stands out above the works of other “nature poets” who took care to keep themselves “out” of their poems. In Oliver”s poems, the poet is central, and the lines are cleanly drawn. Her work is open and accessible, easy to understand without being pedantic.