Mary Oliver (1) [1935–2019]

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) was born in Ohio and as a teenager lived briefly in the home of Edna St. Vincent Millay, helping Millay's family sort through the poet's papers. She attended both Ohio State University and Vassar College, though she did not receive a degree.

Her first collection of poems, No Voyage, and Other Poems, was published in 1963. Since then, she has published numerous books, including New and Selected Poems (1992), which won the National Book Award, and American Primitive (1983), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize.

"Mary Oliver's poetry is an excellent antidote for the excesses of civilization," wrote one reviewer for the Harvard Review, "for too much flurry and inattention, and the baroque conventions of our social and professional lives. She is a poet of wisdom and generosity whose vision allows us to look intimately at a world not of our making."

Her many awards include the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award.

Mary Oliver held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College until 2001.