Poet of the Day: Mary Oliver
|
|
Mary Oliver (1935–2019) was an “indefatigable guide to the natural world,” wrote
Maxine Kumin
in the
Women’s Review of Books,
“particularly to its lesser-known aspects.” Kumin also noted that Oliver “stands quite comfortably on the margins of things, on the line between earth and sky, the thin membrane that separates human from what we loosely call animal.”
Oliver’s poetry won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and a Lannan Literary Award for lifetime achievement
.
Reviewing
Dream Work
(1986) for the
Nation,
critic
Alicia Ostriker
numbered Oliver among America’s finest poets, as “visionary as [Ralph Waldo] Emerson.”
Mary Oliver was born and raised in Maple Hills Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. She would retreat from a difficult home to the nearby woods, where she would build huts of sticks and grass and write poems. As a young poet, Oliver was deeply influenced by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
and briefly lived in Millay’s home, helping Norma Millay organize her sister’s papers.
Oliver was notoriously reticent about her private life, but it was during this period that she met her long-time partner, Molly Malone Cook. The couple moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts, and the surrounding Cape Cod landscape had a marked influence on Oliver’s work. Known for its clear and poignant observations and evocative use of the natural world, Oliver’s poetry is firmly rooted in place and the Romantic nature tradition.
Mary Oliver held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College until 2001. She lived in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Hobe Sound, Florida, until her death in early 2019. She was 83.
|
|
This poet belongs in our classrooms because . . .
|
Mary Oliver's story is one of personal triumph over a difficult childhood, which many children today experience. She used her love of nature to spend time alone with her gift of writing, and she found a way to shine even in the darkest times of her life. The darker the time, the brighter her light. Something wonderful emerged, and students whose circumstances are challenging will relate.
In addition, her poetry shows her keen observational skills and her powerful perspectives—for example, in "The Storm," the dog is blissfully playing and running in the snow; Oliver sees it as his way of “snow writing” about his joyful feelings as he makes tracks and she reads them. She shows us interesting ways of perceiving the world around us.
|
|
The Storm
Now through the white orchard my little dog
romps, breaking the new snow
with wild feet
Running here running there, excited,
hardly able to stop, he leaps, he spins
until the white snow is written upon
in large, exhuberant letters,
a long sentence, expressing
the pleasures of the body in this world.
Oh, I could not have said it better myself.
|
|
I used the book
Dog Songs
for a Teacher Adventure Book Club during National Poetry Month in April 2019. Teachers joined the club and we met to discuss the book. We also used one of the poems that Oliver had used as a model poem and wrote our own poems patterned after hers. Our club also worked with our art teacher, Mike Thompson, who led us in the creation of dog bowl pottery. My participants discussed the book and we spotlighted several poems for discussion and activities, including the following:
p. 5 “If You are Holding This Book”
This is a poem that reveals the passion of the author. Students may re-write this about their own favorite sights in the world so as to reveal their own passions. Challenge yourself to write your own version of this poem.
Here is my version:
You may neither agree nor care, but if you are holding my story, you should know that of all the sights I love in this world—and there are plenty—very near the top of the list is this: a mountain cabin at night in the middle of a forest with a raging blizzard, its windows revealing a blazing fireplace with a cozy chair nearby, welcoming a reader with a book and a steaming hot cup of coffee.
p. 7 “Every Dog’s Story”
This lends itself beautifully to talking about safe places in our lives—think about your safe places, which may or may not be geographic or physical places. Ponder what some of our students may say about this.
p. 31 – “Benjamin, Who Came From Who Knows Where”
This poem lends itself to talking about our fears (opposite of “Every Dog’s Story” on p. 7). Think about our fears and those of others—just ponder how we can be sensitive to others as Oliver is with Benjamin. She understands and comforts, and that’s sometimes a powerful reminder of the way that we should be with our students. What does the last line, the most powerful one in the poem, mean to you?
p. 101 “How A Lot of Us Become Friends”
This would be a great poem to use to introduce the concept of making friends and how we connect with each other based on our interests. We could also think about this from the standpoint of making friends with books. Students could make a list poem of all the ways that they befriend people or things in their lives.
p. 69-75 “For I Will Consider My Dog Percy”
Oliver wrote this poem based on Christopher Smart’s poem “For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffrey,” written in the 1700s. She kept some lines as borrowed lines and italicized them, and added her own twists to share her considerations of her dog Percy. Challenge yourself to write the poem for your own pet—or even a relative or friend. Students would enjoy the process of writing a mirror poem.
Here is the link to Smart’s poem.
The Teacher Adventure Book Club each wrote these poems for our own pets, and then we worked with Mr. Thompson at the end of the month as an artistic adventure to bring the book to life creatively through our own expressions.
|
|
Kim Haynes Johnson is a literacy coach and media specialist at Pike County Middle School in Zebulon, Georgia. She has taught all grade levels and enjoys reading, writing, traveling, kayaking, running, and walking her dogs. Her best gift was a book-filled childhood home, where her literary addiction began. She is married with four children and four grandchildren.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
