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Romanticism In Mary Oliver's Poetry

1546 Words7 Pages

Romanticism Meets Modernism
“It was what I was born for- to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world…” (A Year’s Rising) Mary Oliver was born in 1935 in Ohio where she attended two universities, neither of which she maintained a degree from. (Poetry Foundation) She was inspired by the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay and began writing poetry as a young adult. Oliver’s partner in life was Molly Malone Cook, and together, the couple moved to Massachusetts. It was in Massachusetts near the Cape Cod landscape that Oliver would take walks to inspire herself with. As a person, Oliver was a private, reserved person, so she would take her quite walks alone. While on these walks, Oliver didn’t want to feel obligated to write something anytime she went out so she hid pens, pencils, and paper throughout the landscape so that if she suddenly felt inspired, …show more content…

Although Oliver’s inspiration for her writing was the majestic nature surrounding her house, she writes as if she were a romantic poet from centuries ago. Her writing displays the main characteristics of the time period, proving that romanticism is her style of writing. Mary Oliver’s primary inspiration for her poems was the Romantic Tradition and she uses romanticism characteristics, as well as nature and poetic devices, as her driving force in her poems.
Romantic tradition, or romanticism, was an intellectual and artistic movement in the late eighteenth century that had a strong focus on emotion, imagination, and freedom that took place in classic art forms. (Restoration Europe) Mary Oliver’s works were influenced from the characteristics of this time period in history and the evidence of romanticism is evident throughout her poems. During this era, romanticism had a focal point on a deep appreciation for the true beauty of nature. Oliver’s physical inspiration for nature came from the “wooded, pond-studded acres that surround her house.” (Gregory) Poets get their

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