SOURCE: "The Language of Dreams: An Interview with Mary Oliver," in The Bloomsbury Review, Vol. 10, No. 3, May/June, 1990, pp. 1, 6.

In the following interview, Oliver discusses poetry criticism, poetry workshops, and how her poetry has changed since her early work.

Mary Oliver's poetry both celebrates the natural world and puts before us disturbing images of that world, in which we see reflections of ourselves. Her poetry leads us to question what it is that makes us human, what being "civilized" has given us—and what it has cost. She calls upon us as readers to be in her poetry, to "look!" and to "listen!" with all of our might. As Janet McNew wrote in Contemporary Literature, Oliver's poetry evidences a "mythical closeness to the natural world" and a "conviction that nature is … an articulate and conscious subject."

She has given us poetry in which the "power of the earth...