Her poems often evoke a lyrical sense of being in nature, but a mythical sort of Nature, and, while describing an outer world, are really about the inner world. As her poem "Going to Walden" says, the "difficult Trick of living" turns out to be "finding / Walden / where you are."
Mary Oliver
By Jone Johnson Lewis, About.com Guide
Mary Oliver, Poet
Mary Oliver 2010
Getty Images / Frederick M. Brown
Mary Oliver, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1984, was born in Ohio, but moved as an adult to New England. Like the earlier American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, Mary Oliver studied at Vassar College, and in the early 1950s, Mary Oliver worked sometimes as an assistant to Millay's sister.
About Edna St. Vincent Millay
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