No.

Civic Hall, The Dead Bell, (Gatefold CD – Limited Edition of 200, Digital album), the humble bee, 2026 [Originally released on Lost Tribe Sound (LTS097 / LTS097-3)]

Denise Oliver-Velez from the Revolutionary Peoples' Communications Network in front of Reverend C.K. Steele's church during visit to Tallahassee, Florida, 1971 [Black Women Radicals. Photo: John Buckley. Public Domain]

Egyptian amulet with a protective spell against scorpions

Third Intermediate Period, Dynasty 26–30, ca. 1070–332 BCE

Metropolitan Museum of Art 47.105.5

Raad Khair Allah, Unveiling Arab Feminism through Multilingualism. Etel Adnan, «Journal of World Literature», Volume 10, Issue 4, Special Issue: Multilingualisms: Views from the Global South, Edited by David Damrosch and Delia Ungureanu, Brill, 2025, pp. 588-607 [Art: © The Estate of Etel Adnan / Adagp, Paris]

This is one of those times that you question what you read because you happen to know a lot about a particular subject and wonder what's going on with those articles you don't have the same level of knowledge about. The author of this piece (a woman) didn't know Mary Oliver was a lesbian? Yikes. It's only stamped on every picture that exists of her. In another key moment of wobble, the poet Nick Flynn offers a summary critique of the guardedness Oliver was known for on the page. “She always presented herself in the light,” he says, seemingly when asked about the limits of his fandom. There was “no wrestling with her own shadow.” Which feels fair, given highlights in her canon.

Wrong! Did you take a moment to look through any of Dream Work? It doesn't get much darker than a poem about sexual abuse. Even Wild Geese, that famous upon famous poem, is underwritten by darkness. There's more, but it's low-hanging fruit that was apparently ignored. If you're only looking at the highlights, how closely are you really looking? I think some of the darker work comes from the first half of Oliver's career, which perhaps not coincidentally is less well-known than work from the second half. Space is given to Oliver’s detractors, who wish she we would have weighed in on the AIDS crisis as a queer woman writing during its heyday.