Mary Oliver
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award Winning Poet
32 Poems Discusses Mary Oliver’s “Singapore”
Julie Brooks-Barbour participated in a discussion on the 32 Poems Facebook page about favorite poems. This developed into a brief essay about Mary Oliver’s “Singapore” posted on the 32 Poems blog. Here’s an excerpt.
“Though the title is important in defining place and how we, as readers, might visualize the woman in the poem, I think that is where its significance ends. Since the woman we meet through the speaker never utters a word, acting as a silent movie character, she could very well be any woman cleaning any airport anywhere in the world. What is most significant is the way in which the speaker argues against how the larger culture has taught her to treat a janitor or anyone working a job that would make her cringe, and how she accepts this woman as part of the world, as a human among humans, in the only way she knows how: through a poem.” Read the rest.
Photographs
 – Mary Oliver, Summer 1964. Photo by Molly Malone Cook, from Our World (Beacon Press, 2007). |
Praise
“Poems like ‘Some Questions You Might Ask,’ The Hermit Crab,’ ‘Wings,’ ‘Turtle,’ Roses, Late Summer’ take my breath away. What I feel is an immense gratitude that they are written, and that I can read them over and over. I think of Oliver as a fierce, uncompromising lyricist, a loyalist of the marshes. Hers is a voice we desperately need.”
—Maxine Kumin