Sharon Drijanski

Lisa Starr remembers beloved poet, Mary Oliver in our summer issue, THE WILD: 

We now know, through some of the later poems, a few of the details about the abuse she endured as a child, and we also know that she used her craft to transform not only her own suffering, but also the heartbreaking nature of the world—the fact, say, that everything and everyone is going to die—into a thing of beauty. Think of ‘Night and The River;’ think of the snapping turtle she found and captured in the city and released into a nearby pond because: “Nothing’s important/except that the great and cruel mystery of the world,/of which this is a part,/ not be denied.”

Read it here.

Pictured: Mary Oliver, photograph by Tricia Spoto