Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver is a poet born in Maple Heights, Ohio in 1935. She began writing when she was 14, and at 17 she began working in Edna St. Vincent Millay’s estate. She studied at Ohio State and Vassar, and she published her first poetry collection at 28. She taught at Case Western Reserve University for some time and received the Pulitzer Prize at age 49. She also taught at Bennington University and held residences at several other academic institutions. Besides her vast work of poetry, she has also published essays and handbooks.

Oliver met the photographer Molly Malone Cook in her twenties and they were together, living in Provincetown, until Cook’s death in 2005. Oliver does not want too much information about her personal life to become public and so she has rarely given an interview. She wants her poetry to speak for itself. Her writing has always been inspired...