Music Lessons by Mary Oliver | Introduction & Overview

Music Lessons Introduction

 Mary Oliver is usually and conveniently referred  to as a New England nature or pastoral poet and thought to descend from a line of other New Eng-197-7 land pastoralist writers, from Thoreau to Robert Frost. "Music Lessons," from Oliver's third volume of poetry, Twelve Moons (1979), however, is somewhat uncharacteristic since its inspiration and situation begin in a house at a private music lesson where a teacher takes a break from teaching and plays for her probably younger student and for herself. Perhaps the poem documents a memory from Oliver's childhood.

In "Music Lessons" a teacher, perhaps growing tired with the student's fumblings or imperfections, decides to take over the keyboard. The music acts upon the student as challenge and adventure and upon the pianist as escape from domesticity and mortality. Quietly feminist and more loudly a paean to music, the title, "Music Lessons," is apropos in that the...
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