22 pages • 44 minutes read
Mary OliverOxygen
Mary OliverFiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“When Death Comes” by Mary Oliver (1991)
Oliver’s belief that one must accept death’s inevitability to enjoy life’s smallest moments fully reoccurs throughout her oeuvre. In this 1991 poem, Oliver wants to move through her life with amazement so that she can reach death with a sense of curiosity. Oliver approaches death more philosophically, less personal, and grounded than in 2005’s “Oxygen.” Death comes across more as a thought experiment than a lived possibility here.
“Witch-Wife” by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1917)
A significant influence on Oliver’s craft, early 20th Century American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay also openly wrote about same-sex desire between women. In “Witch-Wife,” Millay bittersweetly captures her crush’s physical beauty and independence, even as she knows “she never will be all mine” (Lines 2, 12).
“The Embrace” by Mark Doty (1998)
In the late 20th and early 21st Centuries, marriage equality became an important issue for American LGBTQ+ activists. People were often locked out of decisions regarding their partner’s health because they were not spouses nor legal relatives, especially during the AIDS crisis. As a result, caregiving and hospice work became essential activities in the LGBTQ+ community. Like Oliver’s speaker in “Oxygen,” the speaker in gay poet Mark Doty’s “The Embrace” considers the passing of a partner, and the partner’s ill body in a domestic space. Both “Oxygen” and “The Embrace” demonstrate the body as a strong motif throughout 20th Century canon of LGBTQ+ authors.
Further Literary Resources
“What Mary Oliver’s Critics Don’t Understand” by Ruth Franklin (2017)
Written towards the end of Oliver's life, New Yorker writer Ruth Franklin’s book review and profile reveal Oliver’s critical reputation over her lifetime. Although Oliver found massive popularity and won a Pulitzer in 1984, many critics and fellow poets dismissed her work as self-help and unchallenging. However, Franklin says they underestimated Oliver’s spiritual and philosophical complexity. Franklin places Oliver in a lineage of ecstatic poets, including Walt Whitman and John Keats. She found the poet fixates on questions of resurrection, violence, faith, despair, and how a person should live. Franklin writes that Oliver’s body of work points to a writer attempting to reconcile and “combine the spiritual life with the concrete” and the human in the wild. Franklin ultimately praises Oliver’s ability to make these issues accessible to “anybody and everybody.”
“On the Overlooked Eroticism of Mary Oliver” by Jeanna Kadlec (2019)
The body plays a vital role in “Oxygen.” Oliver portrays it as the vessel. The body allows the couple to partake in the world and each other. Even as the lover’s health fails, the speaker pays special attention to their lover’s body. The speaker still finds solace and wonder. However, this imagery is not new grounds for Oliver. Oliver has expressed love through openly discussing and celebrating the body throughout her career, states critic and memoirist Jeanna Kadlec. Kadlec places Oliver’s work within the “queer erotic” tradition, “the validation of our bodies as worthy of attention, of desire, of sex.” She contrasts Oliver’s “queer erotic” with the predominant culture of shame and repression around the body. Oliver “gives the reader permission to inhabit their body: to be present in it, to know and own what they want without shame.”
“Mary Oliver’s world with Molly Malone Cook” by Emilia von dem Hagen
In this blog post, writer Emilia von dem Hagen covers how a writer’s work often reflects their life. She discusses Mary Oliver’s relationship with her life partner, Molly Malone Cook. Hagen summarizes the couple’s 46 years together using excerpts from Oliver’s literary tribute to Cook, Our World (2007). The passages contextualize the images of “Oxygen” and Oliver’s views on love as unity within Oliver and Cook’s lives.
Listen to Poem
Executive Director of Pathlight News Ruth Banta reads Oliver's "Oxygen" on her YouTube channel on September 11, 2020.
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