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Mary Oliver (1935–2019) is that very rare creature: a bestselling poet whose verses are beloved by critics and everyday readers alike. Oliver had a long and prolific career, and her large body of poetry is well known for its sustained attention to the quiet grandeur of the natural world. She won numerous prestigious awards and fellowships, including the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her poetry collection American Primitive and the 1998 Lannan Literary Award for her lifetime achievement as a poet. Oliver was born and raised in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. In her childhood, she dealt with a difficult home life by retreating to nearby woods. There, she found respite in writing poetry and using forest materials to build her own primitive structures. From a young age, then, Oliver saw the natural world as space of refuge. Later in life, Oliver moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts. There, too, she took comfort in the natural environment, and the New England landscape came to have a major influence on her poetry. “Wild Geese” clearly reflects Oliver’s lifelong perception of the natural world as a healing space of retreat, providing solace to all those in need of it.

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