Many of Mary Oliver’s nature poems enact a version of the crucifixion and resurrection.
Tag Archives: Mary Oliver
First Snowfall, A Moment of Grace
For Mary Oliver, the season’s first snow fall raises existential questions and then answers them in its own way.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "First Snow", Nature, snow, Spirituality, Winter Comments closed
Autumn’s Subterranean Mysteries
Oliver’s “Fall Song” captures the “rich spiced residues” of autumn.
Rain Soft as the Fall of Moccasins
Describing the slaughter of the buffalo herds by whites, Mary Oliver draws on Sioux religion to imagine them as not altogether gone.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged buffalo, ghosts, Nature, nature religions, Sioux Comments closed
The Silver Water Crushes Like Silk
Although not explicitly religious, Mary Oliver has a Good Friday-Resurrection progression in many of her poems, including “Morning at Great Pond.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Egrets", "Fawn", "Morning at Great Pond", "Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church", Emily Dickinson, Harold Bloom Comments closed
Far Off the Bells Rang through the Morning
Mary Oliver finds Easter holiness in a new born fawn.
Such Singing in the Wild Branches
On a beautiful spring morning when she is startled by birdsong, Mary Oliver describes a merging with nature where she “began to understand what the bird was saying.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Spring", "Such Singing in the Wild Branches", Intimations of Immortality, Nature, William Wordsworth Comments closed
The Black Honey of Summer
My son’s marriage proposal to his Trinidadian girlfriend has become bound up in my mind with a Mary Oliver poem about blackberries.
Nothing So Sensible as Sensual Inundation
Poetry, with its eye on what really matters, can help us taste food again. Mary Oliver’s “Plum Trees” reminds us to eat with full awareness.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Plum Trees", Andrew Marvell, Food, Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Sensuality, T. S. Eliot, To His Coy Mistress Comments closed
