Mary Oliver

1
Mary Oliver

• By Lyndsey F.

2
The Beginnings

• Mary Oliver is from Cleveland, Ohio, where she
  was born in 1935.
• Oliver is still alive today and currently lives
  in Virginia.

3
Family History

• Mary Olivers father, Edward William Oliver, was
  a teacher.
• Her mother, Helen M. V. Oliver was most likely a
  house wife that stayed home and tended to Marys
  needs.

4
Education

• Oliver received her education from many schools
• Ohio State - one year
• Vassar College (a woman's college)
• Oliver then taught at Case Western Reserve
  University.
• In 1986, she then moved to Bucknell University
  where she honored greatly her role as Poet in
  Residence.
• Soon after that, in 1991, she moved once more to
  Sweet Briar College, in Virginia, where she was
  known as the Margaret Banister Writer in
  Residence.

5
Olivers Other Work

• Other then just a writer of poetry, Oliver was
  also a teacher at schools.
• She taught at Bucknell University, Case Western
  Reserve University, and also a college in
  Virginia.

6
Olivers Poems

• Wild Geese
• You do not have to be good. You do not
  have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles
  through the desert, repenting. You only have to
  let the soft animal of your body love what it
  loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will
  tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes
  on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of
  the rain are moving across the landscapes, over
  the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains
  and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high
  in the clean blue air, are heading home
  again. Whoever you are, no matter how
  lonely, the world offers itself to your
  imagination, calls to you like the wild geese,
  harsh and exciting--over and over announcing
  your place in the family of things.