Mary Oliver

American poet whose work — rooted in long contemplative walks through the woods and dunes of Provincetown, Massachusetts — became one of the most beloved bodies of contemplative literature of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Born in 1935 in Maple Heights, Ohio, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for American Primitive in 1984 and the National Book Award for New and Selected Poems in 1992. Her two questions — 'What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?' and 'Are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?' — have become touchstones of contemporary spiritual life. Her work blends close-watching of the natural world with a deep contemplative attention that has been compared to Rilke, Whitman, and the great wisdom traditions she rarely named.