Mary Oliver's poems focus primarily on the natural world and its connection to humanity. The English department at the University of Illinois published a series of criticisms, each with input from different analysts, in each of these subject areas in regards to Mary Oliver's works.
Mary Oliver is named a Modern Romantic because, while still following the romantic method of bringing forth the connection between the human body and nature, she does not follow the Romantics' traditions. Janet McNew says,
"What Oliver does in her most intense visionary poetry is not so much to defy patriarchal boundaries as to ignore their defining powers. The terms "soul" and "body," for example, do appear in her poetry, but her mischievous phrasing often confuses the expected dichotomy."
Romantics are used to boundaries and clear definitions between humanity and nature, but Mary Oliver does not think boundaries are significant enough to have much emphasis in her own poetry.
"Oliver’s visionary goal, then, involves constructing a subjectivity that does not depend on separation from a world of objects. Instead, she respectfully confers subjecthood on nature..."
Oliver emphasizes that the boundary between humans and nature is not one that can be easily distinguished. We are one with nature, and nature is one with us. She aims to break the walls humans have put up that separate us from our roots in nature. Continuing this idea is Vicki Graham. She says,
"But for Oliver, immersion in nature is not death: language is not destroyed and the writer is not silenced. To merge with the non-human is to acknowledge the self’s mutability and multiplicity, not to lose subjectivity."
Oliver is not trying to say that we should simply lose ourselves in nature. Though she speaks of losing herself sometimes, she always comes back to her own consciousness. She does not emphasize the distinction between humanity and nature, however, that ideology is still present in her writing because she was taught-growing up with a Western ideology-that there is a distinction between humanity and nature. She is saying through her poems that if we merge with nature, even if it is not permanent, we will be stronger and that we will not lose our own ideas or beliefs.
Annette Allen offers a career overview of Mary Oliver and how she rose to power in the poetry world.
"The power of Oliver's highly acclaimed poetry rests in its passionate attention to the natural world which she sees as the source of revelation about ultimate things. Like her romantic predecessors, Oliver locates wisdom in the wilderness she seeks in solitude, where discoveries about the self and nature's otherness can be made."
Allen adds that the theme of an other-worldly connection with nature is apparent in a majority of her works.
"Her first collection, No Voyage and Other Poems (1963), is rooted in a mythical sense of the land and exhibits simplicity and a fine mastery of form..The poems in The River Styx, Ohio and Other Poems (1972) call up an Ohio heritage and reclaim it through memory and myth... Oliver charts a course in the twenty-six poems of Night Traveler between two worlds, human and natural, where the individual faces loneliness and yearns to transcend the limited human world... This desire to merge with nature's kingdom opens Oliver's fourth collection, Twelve Moons (1979), in its first poem, "Sleeping in the Forest," a poem where the poet vanishes over and over into the earth."
With the recent campaigns to preserve the natural world, it is clear why Mary Oliver's works are so popular. She highlights all the benefits that come from humans's connection with nature.
When there is life, there must be death. It is only the natural way of things. It is in Mary's most recent, and most likely last, collection there is an appropriate theme of death, the end of the life cycle. John Gatta explains,
"In Oliver's oeuvre, New and Selected Poems (1992), which is structured in reverse chronological order...These poems have their strength, however, in the theme of imagined death, which is the final wedding of human and natural for the poet. Death recurs in the thirty new poems in various manifestations: in the bold images of . "When Death Comes," a poem about the poet's own death; in poignant and urgent lines about the lushness of peonies before death; and stoically in the isolating, falling snow of "Lonely, White Fields."
The central theme to every criticism of Mary Oliver's works is her incredible emphasis on the connection humans have to nature. The influence of the Romantics is clear, though she displays a modern take on their traditional ideologies. She rose to power as one of the greats because of her ability to modernize the importance of connecting with nature. Mary Oliver is truly the epitome of a Modern Romantic.
Mary Oliver is named a Modern Romantic because, while still following the romantic method of bringing forth the connection between the human body and nature, she does not follow the Romantics' traditions. Janet McNew says,
"What Oliver does in her most intense visionary poetry is not so much to defy patriarchal boundaries as to ignore their defining powers. The terms "soul" and "body," for example, do appear in her poetry, but her mischievous phrasing often confuses the expected dichotomy."
Romantics are used to boundaries and clear definitions between humanity and nature, but Mary Oliver does not think boundaries are significant enough to have much emphasis in her own poetry.
"Oliver’s visionary goal, then, involves constructing a subjectivity that does not depend on separation from a world of objects. Instead, she respectfully confers subjecthood on nature..."
Oliver emphasizes that the boundary between humans and nature is not one that can be easily distinguished. We are one with nature, and nature is one with us. She aims to break the walls humans have put up that separate us from our roots in nature. Continuing this idea is Vicki Graham. She says,
"But for Oliver, immersion in nature is not death: language is not destroyed and the writer is not silenced. To merge with the non-human is to acknowledge the self’s mutability and multiplicity, not to lose subjectivity."
Oliver is not trying to say that we should simply lose ourselves in nature. Though she speaks of losing herself sometimes, she always comes back to her own consciousness. She does not emphasize the distinction between humanity and nature, however, that ideology is still present in her writing because she was taught-growing up with a Western ideology-that there is a distinction between humanity and nature. She is saying through her poems that if we merge with nature, even if it is not permanent, we will be stronger and that we will not lose our own ideas or beliefs.
Annette Allen offers a career overview of Mary Oliver and how she rose to power in the poetry world.
"The power of Oliver's highly acclaimed poetry rests in its passionate attention to the natural world which she sees as the source of revelation about ultimate things. Like her romantic predecessors, Oliver locates wisdom in the wilderness she seeks in solitude, where discoveries about the self and nature's otherness can be made."
Allen adds that the theme of an other-worldly connection with nature is apparent in a majority of her works.
"Her first collection, No Voyage and Other Poems (1963), is rooted in a mythical sense of the land and exhibits simplicity and a fine mastery of form..The poems in The River Styx, Ohio and Other Poems (1972) call up an Ohio heritage and reclaim it through memory and myth... Oliver charts a course in the twenty-six poems of Night Traveler between two worlds, human and natural, where the individual faces loneliness and yearns to transcend the limited human world... This desire to merge with nature's kingdom opens Oliver's fourth collection, Twelve Moons (1979), in its first poem, "Sleeping in the Forest," a poem where the poet vanishes over and over into the earth."
With the recent campaigns to preserve the natural world, it is clear why Mary Oliver's works are so popular. She highlights all the benefits that come from humans's connection with nature.
When there is life, there must be death. It is only the natural way of things. It is in Mary's most recent, and most likely last, collection there is an appropriate theme of death, the end of the life cycle. John Gatta explains,
"In Oliver's oeuvre, New and Selected Poems (1992), which is structured in reverse chronological order...These poems have their strength, however, in the theme of imagined death, which is the final wedding of human and natural for the poet. Death recurs in the thirty new poems in various manifestations: in the bold images of . "When Death Comes," a poem about the poet's own death; in poignant and urgent lines about the lushness of peonies before death; and stoically in the isolating, falling snow of "Lonely, White Fields."
The central theme to every criticism of Mary Oliver's works is her incredible emphasis on the connection humans have to nature. The influence of the Romantics is clear, though she displays a modern take on their traditional ideologies. She rose to power as one of the greats because of her ability to modernize the importance of connecting with nature. Mary Oliver is truly the epitome of a Modern Romantic.