Is Mary Oliver Embarrassing?

Mary oliver was the first poet I read. American Primitive, her Pulitzer Prize–winning fifth collection, was the only book in my childhood home by a living poet. I have a bleary memory of my six-year-old hand pulling the volume’s dark spine down from the hallway shelf, then turning its pages on the floorboards with rapt pleasure. When my parents noticed me reading it, they acquired more of her books: House of Light and New and Selected Poems, which received the National Book Award in 1992.