A private person by nature, Mary Oliver (1935-2019) gave very few
interviews over the years. Instead, she preferred to let her work
speak for itself. And speak it has, for the past five decades, to
countless readers. The New York Times recently acknowledged Mary
Oliver as "far and away, this country's best-selling poet." Born in
a small town in Ohio, Oliver published her first book of poetry in
1963 at the age of 28; No Voyage and Other Poems, originally
printed in the UK by Dent Press, was reissued in the United States
in 1965 by Houghton Mifflin. Oliver has since published twenty
books of poetry and six books of prose. As a young woman, Oliver
studied at Ohio State University and Vassar College, but took no
degree. She lived for several years at the home of Edna St. Vincent
Millay in upper New York state, companion to the poet's sister
Norma Millay. It was there, in the late '50s, that she met
photographer Molly Malone Cook. For more than forty years, Cook and
Oliver made their home together, largely in Provincetown,
Massachusetts, where they lived until Cook's death in 2005. Over
the course of her long and illustrious career, Oliver has received
numerous awards. Her fourth book, American Primitive, won the
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984. She has also received the
Shelley Memorial Award; a Guggenheim Fellowship; an American
Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Achievement Award; the
Christopher Award and the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award for
House of Light; the National Book Award for New and Selected Poems;
a Lannan Foundation Literary Award; and the New England Booksellers
Association Award for Literary Excellence. Oliver's essays have
appeared in Best American Essays 1996, 1998, 2001; the Anchor Essay
Annual 1998, as well as Orion, Onearth and other periodicals.
Oliver was editor of Best American Essays 2009. Oliver's books on
the craft of poetry, A Poetry Handbook and Rules for the Dance, are
used widely in writing programs. She is an acclaimed reader and has
read in practically every state as well as other countries. She has
led workshops at various colleges and universities, and held
residencies at Case Western Reserve University, Bucknell
University, University of Cincinnati, and Sweet Briar College. From
1995, for five years, she held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair
for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College. She has been
awarded Honorary Doctorates from The Art Institute of Boston
(1998), Dartmouth College (2007) and Tufts University (2008).
Molly Malone Cook(1925-2005), was born in San Francisco. One of the
first photographers hired by theVillage Voice,in 1960 she opened
what was probably the first photography gallery on the East Coast.
She also owned a bookstore, which was occasionally staffed by the
filmmaker John Waters. Later, Cook became a literary agent to
Oliver and other writers. Oliver and Cook lived together for more
than forty years.
Readers who savor Oliver's exquisite gifts of attentiveness, her
lean lines, her celebration of the holiness of what is, will
delight in her gifts applied to the being she loved longest. And
anyone who sees the best of Cook's photographs here will celebrate
a remarkable eye. —Brian Doyle, Christian Century
"Oliver interweaves entries from Cook's journal with her own
prose-and-poetry text, revealing a richly textured life, a shared
world that included prominent writers and artists." —Patricia A.
Kossmann, America
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