“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?”
—Mary Oliver
On January 17th, 2019 the poetry world lost a beloved, magnificent soul. Mary Oliver, known for her utilization of nature and Emily Dickinson-esuqe personality passed away from lymphoma at the age of eighty-three in her home in Florida. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Oliver influenced the world with her prose and poetry. Oliver’s “one wild and precious life” was seen through her eyes by her own talent of writing. The way she engulfed readers into nature while exploring their thematic meanings is one of the many reasons she has been such an influential poet in the modern age.
Oliver explored the physical sense of nature in an abundance of her poems. “Breakage,” one of her most well-known pieces, does this while still exploring the complexity of how beautiful and harsh nature can be. It allows the reader to envision the pure beauty while circling back to the beginning and seeing everything a little harsher than it appeared before. By doing this, Oliver allowed her readers to explore the different ways people view the world and the significance they play in their lives. This goes into Oliver’s other way she writes about life; from a spiritual perspective. She writes about the trauma she endured as a child as well as her surviving lung cancer in a way that feels like a deep spiritual connection.
In her poem, “Angels” the spiritual connection is apparent from the title alone, but as the reader delves deeper into the work, it demonstrates the spiritual solace one takes in believing in them. It demonstrates the comfort Oliver has in believing and believing they’re happy and safe seen by the image of them “dancing” by the end of the poem. Her work created a space for people to find comfort in both the natural world and spiritual one. It elicits an emotional reaction of comfort that isn’t always prevalent in life. This provides a sort of escape for readers when reading and makes readers feel her prayer-like words on a deep, connective level.
Oliver’s work allowed readers to see a successful lesbian poet who has faced traumatic experiences as a child, such as sexual abuse and parental neglect. Her work is a representation of why diversity is vital in the literary sphere. She broke barriers and became one of the most talented poets to date. It shows readers across the world that their experiences and lives matter. For young poets, it allows them to know that they can find solace in their own writing, as did Oliver. The just need to believe they can. So, I ask all of you, what will you do with your one wild and precious life? Because you have the world at your fingertips. Don’t waste it and live every second of it to its fullest, just like Mary Oliver did.