The poet Mary Oliver died on Thursday of lymphoma, the AP reports. She was 83 years old.
Pulitzer-winning poet Mary Oliver has died at 83
Mary Oliver reminded us to cherish “your one wild and precious life.”
Constance Grady is a senior correspondent on the Culture team for Vox, where since 2016 she has covered books, publishing, gender, celebrity analysis, and theater.
Oliver was beloved by readers for her direct, unpretentious poetry, which glows with affection for the natural world. But she was not always beloved by critics. Though she won the National Book Award in 1992 and the Pulitzer Prize in 1984, for long periods of her career, critics damned her work with the faint praise of calling it “earnest.” Oliver herself, however, believed that her poetry’s so-called earnestness was a strength. “Poetry, to be understood, must be clear,” she told NPR in 2012. “It mustn’t be fancy.”
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In celebration and remembrance of Oliver’s legacy, here is one of her best-loved poems, “The Summer Day.” First published in 1992, it’s a pointed and potent reminder not to take for granted “your one wild and precious life.”
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
