Talk:Mary Oliver

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[edit] Things I'd like to add:

• Influences: Millay, especially in Oliver's early work; James Wright, her mentor at Ohio State; Whitman; British Romantics (Blake, Wordsworth, Keats); perhaps May Swenson?
• Her development over time. Moving way away from tightly-structured poems toward prose poems?
• Discussion of Oliver's popular appeal (rare for a "critically-acclaimed" poet). This would be a good place to address the common criticism that her language is simplistic and repetitive. Does she deliberately make her work accessible?
• How she approaches nature: joyful without being sentimental/naive
• "Non-nature" themes: eg, her father, Buddhism, the Holocaust
• Oliver's own scholarly interests
• Quotations, of course, in support of topics above
• A photograph of Oliver, and perhaps of the Provincetown wetlands

amysayrawr 16:36, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Quote

Which book is it out of: "Is the soul solid, like iron? Or is it tender and breakable, like the wings of a moth or the beak of an owl?" (because I would like to place one or two quotes in the article). Thanks, Scriberius 06:21, 8 March 2006 (UTC)