![]() ![]() ![]() Oliver knew early on that she wanted to be a writer, and her demeanor, even as a young teen, was serious and determined. Her father was a teacher and her mother a stay-at-home mom. Mary Oliver was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1935. Not all poets can pull that off, but Oliver is one of the noted few who can. This is a brief poem written in casual language, but it still manages to be stimulating and powerful. From its first line-rife with intriguing ambiguity-the poem draws the reader in with a sense of immediacy and a keen awareness of how “you” may be feeling and what “you” may be thinking. ![]() In “Wild Geese,” she encourages the reader to be more imaginative and to shed loneliness by discovering his or her place “in the family of things”-namely, the family of sun and rain, prairies and trees, mountains, rivers, and, ultimately, wild geese flying home.Īlthough the premise of this poem may seem simple, or even trite, the real gut of its message is quite provocative. Typical themes involve the beauty and wonders of nature and how much better the world would be if people were more in tune with it. Oliver is well noted for her poetry of the natural world, and she often relates animals and varieties of plant life to the human condition. In it, she explores the connection between the human mind, nature in general, and wild geese in particular. “Wild Geese,” which first appeared in Mary Oliver’s Dream Work, published in 1986, is one of the poet’s most anthologized poems. ![]()
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