Mary Oliver: Pulitzer Prize winner and dog lover

Pointers Northwoods Comet (CH Rock Acre Blackhawk x Northwoods Vixen, 2018) and Northwoods Vixen (CH Westfall’s Black Ice x Northwoods Prancer, 2011).

Poetry is an entirely different form of creative writing from fiction and nonfiction. There are fierce devotees and equally strong detractors.

Mary Oliver might make at least some of the latter group enjoy a poem or two.

Over Oliver’s lifetime (1935 – 2019), she wrote 20 books of poetry and six of prose. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for American Primitive, a collection of poetry. She won many other distinguished awards including the National Book Award in 1992 and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

She was an introverted, private person and also a lover of dogs. She devoted one collection, Dog Songs, to them. Here is a poem about Percy.

Little Dog’s Rhapsody in the Night

He puts his cheek against mine
and makes small, expressive sounds.
And when I’m awake, or awake enough

he turns upside down, his four paws
in the air
and his eyes dark and fervent.

“Tell me you love me,” he says.

“Tell me again.”

Could there be a sweeter arrangement? Over and over
he gets to ask.
I get to tell.

~ Mary Oliver
Dog Songs

English-bred May, sired by CH Conneywarren Jason of British Labradors.

Oliver lived for about four decades in Provincetown, Mass., where she developed her passion for the ocean, tides, birds and the Cape Cod seashore. She always carried a pad and pen on her solitary daily walks and, as inspiration came to her, she jotted down lines. Here is a poem about the Cape shore.

I Go Down To The Shore In The Morning

I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.

~ Mary Oliver
A Thousand Mornings