Written in the latter half of her career, American poet Mary Oliver’s “Oxygen” exhibits her shift towards writing more directly about the human world rather than her earlier, more eco-centric work. Oliver, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983, lived from 1935 to 2019. Oliver’s writing draws from the 19th Century Romantic movement while capturing emerging environmentalism awareness in the late 20th Century.

The New Yorker magazine first published “Oxygen” in its October 10, 2005 issue. The free-verse poem’s release came two months after Oliver’s life partner Molly Malone Cook passed away from lung cancer. “Oxygen” reflects upon the experience of taking care of a dying loved one. While capturing one moment in a couple’s life, the poem is not narrative and lacks a formal conclusion. “Oxygen” uses the lyric mode, highlighting the speaker’s unique worldview and emotions. As with many of Oliver’s poems, “Oxygen” lauds interdependence, paying attention to the moment, and understanding humanity as a part of nature. The poem also defines love as a unity of experience and routine.

Poet Biography

American poet Mary Jane Oliver was born in Maple Heights, Ohio on September 10, 1935. She wrote about and in the woods from an early age. Growing up in an abusive household, Oliver saw the natural world and poetry as her escape. She found enchantment in the words of earlier American poets, especially Walt Whitman and Edna St. Vincent Millay. As a high school student, Oliver wrote and asked Millay’s sister Norma if Oliver could visit Millay’s house in New York state. Millay’s home became a beacon and a base for Oliver over the years, where she often assisted Norma in organizing her sister’s papers. Oliver attended Vassar College and Ohio State University but never received degrees from either.

Millay’s home also opened the doors to Oliver for romance. Oliver recounted first setting eyes on her life-long partner, photographer Molly Malone Cook, in the kitchen. “I took one look and fell, hook and tumble,” Oliver later wrote about that day in 1953 (Popova, Maria. “Mary Oliver on What Attention Really Means and Her Moving Elegy for Her Soul Mate.” The Marginalian, June 23, 2021). Both women soon learned they lived across the street from each other in New York City’s East Village. The women stayed together until Cook’s death from lung cancer in 2005.

Cook’s photography practice greatly influenced Oliver’s poetry. Oliver frequently watched Cook take photographs and develop them in a darkroom. She saw the kindness and interest Cook gave to friends and strangers. “An openness—an empathy—was necessary if the attention was to matter. Such openness and empathy M. had in abundance, and gave away freely,” Oliver wrote. “M. instilled in me this deeper level of looking and working” (Popova). For Oliver, attention became a form to express love and curiosity.

Intentional attention and focus became hallmarks of Oliver’s works, offering a way for people to access and understand the world around them. She wanted anyone to be able to read and comprehend her work. Oliver often drew imagery and narratives for her poems from actual everyday events that happened to her. After she and Cook moved to the Massachusetts city of Provincetown, Oliver found inspiration while hunting fish and clams for food. Fittingly, Oliver’s works asked readers to reconsider the mundane and find beauty in it. Critics praised Oliver’s ability to highlight the importance of the physical and frankly portray the wonder and horrors of the natural world.

Oliver won the 1970 Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award seven years after publishing her first collection, No Voyage and Other Poems (1963). Later, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her collection, American Primitive (1983). By the time her other most famous poetry collection, Dream Work appeared in 1986, critics hailed her as one of the great modern American poets.

During her career, she was awarded the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College, a National Book Award, Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships, and the American Academy of Arts & Letters Award. Over her lifetime, she published more than 30 collections of poetry, as well as books of essays and poetry writing guides.

Later in life, Oliver moved to Florida, where she passed away from lymphoma on January 17, 2019 at the age of 83.

Poem Text

Oliver, Mary. “Oxygen.” 2005. This Simple on WordPress.

Summary

The speaker begins “Oxygen” with a statement about oxygen’s importance for life. Air allows the human body’s organs to function. The speaker notes that even the soul needs oxygen, as long as it is still housed within a human body. Because of this need, a “merciful, noisy machine” (Line 3) that mimics human breathing with a “lung-like voice” (Line 5) is in the home.

Oliver then reveals the poem’s speaker and the listener simultaneously; the speaker says this machine is in “our house” (Line 4), indicating that the speaker is addressing anotherr with whom they live. The speaker hears the device’s loud sounds as they tend their fireplace. The speaker then thinks about the partner upstairs. Because the speaker works while the lover relaxes, the reader can infer that the partner needs the breathing machine.

The reader sees the speaker talking to her partner in her mind. The speaker knows that their partner leans on their right shoulder despite the pain. The speaker adores the lover’s patient breathing since it means the partner is still alive. The link between breath and life drives the speaker to reflect on their relationship. They deeply entwined their lives to the point that the speaker reflects it would be impossible to know how to separate them.

The speaker asks what this connection has to do with love. However, the speaker answers themselves, saying “everything” (Line 19). The speaker returns from their musings and back to the fire in front of them, which grows with burning red embers and suddenly settles back down. The speaker then tells the lover that the fire has the exact needs as them and other living things: air. The speaker praises the air as a gift and a gentle presence, a pure and “sweet necessity” (Line 24).