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The poem in which the reader does not feel himself or herself a participant is a lecture, listened to from an uncomfortable chair, in a stuffy room, inside a building.

Mary Oliver

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Mary Oliver
Age: 83 †
Born: 1935
Born: September 10
Died: 2019
Died: January 17
Climate Activist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Maple Heights
Ohio
Mary Jane Oliver
Inside
Listened
Building
Chair
Doe
Chairs
Feel
Poem
Stuffy
Feels
Uncomfortable
Participant
Reader
Lecture
Room
Participants
Rooms
Lectures

More quotes by Mary Oliver

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Who do you want to be in your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
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You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without doubt,I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.
Mary Oliver
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But I also say this: that light is an invitation to happiness, and that happiness, when it's done right, is a kind of holiness, palpable and redemptive.
Mary Oliver
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There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But who wants easier?
Mary Oliver
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I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.
Mary Oliver
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People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.
Mary Oliver
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I want to be braver and more honest about my life. When you're sexually abused, there's a lot of damage.
Mary Oliver
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maybe death isn't darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us--
Mary Oliver
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I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded.
Mary Oliver
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Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
Mary Oliver
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All eternity is in the moment.
Mary Oliver
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The language of the poem is the language of particulars.
Mary Oliver
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What I have done is learn to love and learn to be loved. That didn't come easy.
Mary Oliver
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I have a notebook with me all the time, and I begin scribbling a few words. When things are going well, the walk does not get anywhere I finally just stop and write.
Mary Oliver
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All night my heart makes its way however it can over the rough ground of uncertainties, but only until night meets and then is overwhelmed by morning, the light deepening, the wind easing and just waiting, as I too wait (and when have I ever been disappointed?) for redbird to sing
Mary Oliver
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And I say to my heart: rave on.
Mary Oliver
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Poetry is a life-cherishing force.
Mary Oliver
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Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, Stay awhile.
Mary Oliver
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The end of life has its own nature, also worth our attention.
Mary Oliver
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...Sometimes I dream that everything in the world is here, in my room, in a great closet, named and orderly, and I am here too, in front of it, hardly able to see for the flash and the brightness- and sometimes I am that madcap person clapping my hands and singing and sometimes I am that quiet person down on my knees.
Mary Oliver