Oxygen by Mary Oliver - An Argumentative Analysis

Introduction

The Poem entitled, “Oxygen” is written by Mary Oliver and belongs to her collection of poems, entitled “Thirst”. The book was published in the year 2007. There are 43 poems in the book. As usual, the poet expresses her utmost simplicity and purity in her words, beautifully woven into poetic stanzas. The best thing about Mary Oliver's poetry is that she is not pretentious in her expressions. In the particular collection, Mary Oliver beautifully expresses the loss of her beloved partner, Molly Molane Cook. Unlike other poets, who express utmost gloom and sorrow when they express the loss of a loved one, Mary Oliver only intensifies her love for the nature and the world, amalgamated with her grief. In this paper, I will carry out an argumentative analysis of the poem “Oxygen,” which is taken from the same collection of poems.

About the Author

Mary Oliver she lived for a short time d in the home of Edna St. Vincent Millay. After her death, Mary helped Millay's sister, Norma, to categorize papers for Millay. In the 1950s, she went to the State University of Ohio and the Vassar College without graduating. She lived in Provincetown (Massachusetts) for four decades. Her partner, Molly Malone Cook, served as his literary agent for life. Mary Oliver is renowned as an intense and joyful observer of nature; Mary Oliver is often compared to Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau. Her poems are full of pictures of her daily activities near her home in Provincetown primroses, water snakes, moon phase and whales. (Wisdom Portal)

Her work, in fact, is one of the highest points of poetry dedicated to nature. With her work, it opened new avenues for awareness about the environmental crisis. Mary Oliver uses a simple and clear language and style for the reader to share his love for other living beings. Her house is the "Great Mother" Earth to honor in her poems. Mary Oliver has received numerous awards for her work including the Lannan Literary Awards (in) for poetry in 1998, the National Book Award in 1992 for her collection New and Selected Poems, the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1984 for the collection American Primitive, the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1980, and the Shelley Memorial Award (in) in 1969-70 awarded by the Poetry Society of America. Her first collection of poems includes the following:

No Voyage and Other Poemsin (1963);

Thirst (Beacon Press, 2006);

Why I Wake Early (2004);

Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays (2003);

Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems (1999);

 West Wind (1997);

White Pine (1994);

 New and Selected Poems (1992).

The poetry of Mary Oliver is a splendid antidote to the excess of civilization, wrote a critic of Harvard Magazine, for the outbreak in excess and lack of attention, and extravagant patterns of our professional and social life. Mary Oliver is a poet of sapience and unselfishness whose imagination accords us to see our world closely. She received an honour from the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry Society Shelley Memorial ...