American Primitive: Poems Characters & Character Analysis

American Primitive: Poems Characters

Narratorappears in Entire Collection

The narrator in this collection of poem is the person who speaks throughout, Mary Oliver. The poems are written in first person, and the narrator appears in every poem to a lesser or greater extent. In "August", the narrator spends all day eating blackberries, and her body accepts itself for what it is. In "The Kitten", the narrator takes the stillborn kitten from its mother's bed and buries it in the field behind the house. She could have given it to a museum or called the newspaper, but, instead, she buries it in the earth. This is her way of saying that life is real and inventive. She believes that she did the right thing by giving it back peacefully to the earth from whence it came. In "In the Pinewoods, Crows and Owl", the narrator addresses the owl.

In "The...
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