Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Reader
Lecture
Room
Participants
Rooms
Lectures
Inside
Listened
Building
Chair
Doe
Chairs
Feel
Poem
Stuffy
Feels
Uncomfortable
Participant

More quotes by Mary Oliver

Image
At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled after a night of rain. I dip my cupped hands. I drink a long time. It tastes like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold into my body, waking the bones. I hear them deep inside me, whispering oh what is that beautiful thing that just happened?
Mary Oliver
Image
... to write well it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers.
Mary Oliver
Image
And now I understand something so frightening &wonderful- how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar.
Mary Oliver
Image
You must not ever stop being whimsical.
Mary Oliver
Image
My work is loving the world.
Mary Oliver
Image
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
Mary Oliver
Image
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
Image
Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want to be there. It is not even a walk we take together.
Mary Oliver
Image
And it is exceedingly short, his galloping life. Dogs die so soon. I have my stories of that grief, no doubt many of you do also. It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old-or so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give.
Mary Oliver
Image
After a cruel childhood, one must reinvent oneself. Then reimagine the world.
Mary Oliver
Image
When will you have a little pity for every soft thing that walks through the world, yourself included.
Mary Oliver
Image
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
Image
Every morning I walk like this around the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead.
Mary Oliver
Image
You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.
Mary Oliver
Image
I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.
Mary Oliver
Image
Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, Stay awhile.
Mary Oliver
Image
Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket you put your life into it and make something out of that.
Mary Oliver
Image
We can know a lot. And still, no doubt, there are rash and wonderful ideas brewing somewhere there are many surprises yet to come.
Mary Oliver
Image
Isn’t it wonderful the way the world holds both the deeply serious, and the unexpectedly mirthful?
Mary Oliver
Image
The three ingredients of poetry: the mystery of the universe, spiritual curiosity, the energy of language.
Mary Oliver