In your hands The dog, the donkey, surely they know They are alive. Who would argue otherwise? But now, after years of consideration, I am getting beyond that. What about the sunflowers? What about The tulips, and the pines? Listen, all you have to do is start and There’ll be no stopping. What about mountains? What about water Slipping over rocks? And speaking of stones, what about The little ones you can Hold in your hands, their heartbeats So secret, so hidden it may take years Before, finally, you hear them?

1980 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship
1984 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for American Primitive
1992 National Book Award for Poetry for New and Selected Poems
1998 Lannan Literary Award for poetry
1998 Honorary Doctorate from The Art Institute of Boston
2007 Honorary Doctorate Dartmouth College
2008 Honorary Doctorate Tufts University
2012 Honorary Doctorate from Marquette University


Works


Notes. On a return visit to Austerlitz in the late 1950s Oliver met photographer Molly Malone Cook who would become her partner for over forty years. In Long life Mary Oliver says "[I] go off to my woods my ponds my sun-filled harbor no more than a blue comma on the map of the world but to me the emblem of everything.

Mary Oliver (born September 10 1935) is an American poet who has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.