wild geese & skunk cabbage, by Mary Oliver

close reading perspectives on the natural world from our favorite Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet

In college, I was swept away by Walt Whitman. I kept Song of Myself near my bedside and read it with an almost spiritual devotion.

I was in the throes of my own spiritual journey, deconstructing the religion I’d been raised in and I found myself so eager to learn about other worldviews and ways of thinking. Whitman’s maximalist universe, filled with self-love and eroticism and ecstatic joy in human connection resonated with me as I wondered about what I really believed in and asked myself what I wanted for my life.

Then, one freezing winter day, a sensitive and kind professor began a lecture in our Women’s Literature course by discussing the poet we’d be reading that week. On that ice-cold morning, I folded the paperback cover round the spine and took in American Primitive, by Mary Oliver, for the first time.