“There were treasures all around/if you paid attention,” begins this lyrical, verse biography of poet Mary Oliver. We see how the woods were an escape for Mary, where she sat and wrote, both as a young girl and as an adult.
Then, on one “regular day,” she had a visitor, and saw “Love!” The book explains that “It took Molly longer,/but eventually she saw it, too.” Photographer Molly and writer Mary “captured their world” in different ways, but settled together in Provincetown.
Mary found inspiration everywhere: under leaves, on the back of snakes, in the smell of skunk cabbage. She “gathered words” as she walked, but also gathered berries, mushrooms, and other treats to bring back to the home she shared with Molly. We see small details of Mary’s life as she publishes her poems, but also works at a printing company to earn extra money, where she scrounges scraps of paper on which to write. Even when Mary won “the biggest poetry prize” (the Pulitzer, although the book smartly doesn’t bother young readers with that detail), she was more concerned with the everyday tasks that needed doing around her home.
While some people found her poems too “ordinary,” Mary “told the truth,” even if this meant a man wouldn’t publish what she wrote. Readers, we learn, loved her poems and carried them with them. Mary kept writing, year after year, always with the same love of the outdoors and the spirit of discovery.
Author Sara Holly Ackerman skillfully captures something of Oliver’s spirit and her approach to poetry and to life, while illustrations from Naoko Stoop add to the atmosphere with natural brown and green tones. It’s a highly recommended biography that should motivate readers to seek out some of Oliver’s poems, or even to write their own.
Backmatter includes an Author’s Note with additional details of Oliver’s life, and Selected Sources.
