10/25/2006

The Green World

I had occasion to look up a Mary Oliver poem this evening and I hopped over to her Wiki entry and discovered an interesting connection I had never known about:

As a teenager, she lived for a brief while in the home of the recently-deceased Edna St. Vincent Millay, where she helped Millay's sister Norma organize the papers Millay left behind

I may be the only one who thinks that is amazingly cool and it makes me wonder how influential ESVM's poetry was on MO. I can certainly see how MO would have read Renascence and been struck with its deeply natural world imagery. I would like to think it helped informed her own poetry with its emphasis on such elements. Anyway. Cool to me.
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4 comments:

vivvy said...

It's pretty cool to me too! Wow, what a great opportunity for a young writer. I wonder if Oliver is mentioned at all in that bio of Millay, Savage Beauty I may have to check tonight.

9:08 AM
El N said...

I don't recall in that book (and can't seem to find it here at the house), but I looked in another bio I have, What lips my lips have kissed and see no reference to MO. Those later years were all about morphine and gin so in some respects, we might be glad if they had not met. I would imagine it would have left a teenaged MO disillusioned.

I also saw where MO's longtime partner, Molly Cook, died last year. MO has a new book of poetry out, Thirst which apparently is much focused on that. From the reviews, there's a much more overtly Christian focus. I guess I always thought she leaned more neo-paganistic, from her poetry.

I will be interested in reading MO's biography when the time comes, though I hope it won't for awhile.

11:06 AM
El N said...

ps. It almost inspires me to write a bit of fiction, a young MO sorting through EsvM's papers at Steepletop farm. Nothing slashy of course, just tragically romantic and such. Or actually, sweetie, you writing such a thing would make my heart go pitter patter. :)

11:12 AM
vivvy said...

We are often, strangely, on a similar wavelength! I had this strange compulsion recently to write something semi-slashy about Harper Lee. (Based on the fact that we saw Infamous and even though Sandra Bullock was surprisingly decent as Lee, it nonetheless reminded me of how awesome Catherine Keener was in the role.)

And now I feel I must go back and read "Renascence."

3:44 PM

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