Idiosyncratic Style of Mary Oliver & Analysis of Her Poems on
Graphological, Phonological and Lexico-Semantic Levels of
Language
Significance of style in poetry:
Today, poetry remains a significant part of art and culture. Poetry is written to share ideas,
express emotions and to evoke a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience. Poems
carries different styles. The “style” in poetry refers to all the choices that are made to create the
poem’s meaning. Style can incorporate technical choices, such as using short or long lines and
phrases, varying or omitting punctuation, or a set rhythm or rhyme scheme. Style can include
poetic choices such as diction, form, and central idea. All these factors contribute to a reader’s
overall experience reading a poem, and they make up its style. Style in poetry involves the
techniques a poet uses to convey meaning, tone and feeling in the poems. Poets in every literary
era (classical to contemporary) uses their individual and unique style in writing their poems.
What is Idiosyncratic Analysis?
The idiosyncratic analysis shows the special characteristics of writer’s writing style which
distinguishes it from other writers. The way of expressing the ideas and thoughts of a person is
affected by his/her true personality directly or indirectly. This type of analysis provides a clear
picture of writer’s personality and mind. Buffon’s famous saying says that “style is the man
himself” means that style is writer’s individuality in the world of literature presented through
language. From the surface to the depth of the word, there are a bunch of meanings in it. All
these hidden meanings are the reflection of writer’s true personality. The writers develop their
unique style to emphasize their hidden meaning or to break an old certain pattern. The language
of the poetry expresses the meanings in a twisted manner. It is the feature which distinguish the
writers by the way they express their ideas in a twisted manner.
Mary Jane Oliver:
,Mary Jane Oliver was an American poet. She was born on September, 10, 1935 in Ohio. She
was a brilliant student and attended both Ohio State University and Vassar College, but did not
receive a degree from either institution. She started writing poetry at the age of 14. Her poetry is
often centered around her experiences growing up. Her work is characterized by nature rather
than the human-world, stemming from her lifelong passion for solitary walks in the wild. As
Maxine Kumin wrote, “Mary Oliver was an indefatigable guide to the natural world”. Oliver’s
poetry focused on the quiet occurrences of nature. She died on January, 17, 2019. She was
declared to be the best-selling poet in the year 2007. She won National Book Award and the
Pulitzer Prize.
Mary Oliver’s Idiosyncratic Style:
Mary Oliver has become a favorite of poetry readers of all ages for her lyrical, intimate and
sensitive poems, many of which use nature as a lens for exploring the spectrum of human
emotions, from love and joy to sorrow and despair. Part of the key to Oliver’s appeal is her
accessibility: she writes in blank verse in a conversational style, with no typographical
gimmicks. But an equal part is that she offers her readers an intense spiritual release that they
might not have realized they are looking for. Mary Oliver was a contemporary poet, writes blank
verse in conversational style and brings her readers on a spiritual journey through nature. Oliver,
inspired by Shelly, Keats and Whitman had become a euphoric poet.
The main focus of her mostly all the poems is nature. She was often considered an old-fashioned
poet because of her poems entirely based on nature. Nature, being a central idea is a pattern of
old poems therefore, critics did not consider her an up-to-date contemporary poet. Oliver takes
the audience on a spiritual journey which is an encounter with nature. Also, her poems often end
with a moral. Her poems go through a smooth and gentle touch giving its audience a sense of
calmness. People have deep love and understanding for her poems as they are easily relatable
with their personal experiences. The simplicity in the language of her poems makes them
comprehendible by everyone. Her focus is on communicating her ideas through simple words
rather than creating just a fancy poem.
, The idiosyncratic style of Oliver acts as a mirror of her true love for the beauty of nature. Unlike
the classical poets, Oliver’s concept and depiction is nature is simpler in the sense that she does
not glorify nature but she keeps it natural using simpler language with a lot of adjectives related
to nature. Her use of nature in her poems in different and convey deep message such as purpose
of life, essence of humanity, nature and the self, beauty of natural surroundings without
technology, and so on. She uses a lot of beautiful images of nature in her poetry. She uses nature
both symbolically as well as subject matter of her poetry. Even the titles of her poems are simple
but related to nature.
Moreover, her style of writing is distinctive from other writers. She mostly writes in narrative
style and provides a subjective point of view based on her experiences. Her story-telling and
thought-process go side-by-side in her poem. In addition to this, she shifts a lot in her poems.
The structure of her poems goes back-and forth in terms of real and fantasy.
She uses many stylistic techniques in her nature poetry. Her poetry is filled more with
metaphors, similes and nature imagery. The most significant feature of her poems is the
irregular line-count in the stanza. Each and every stanza differs in the number of lines. Also, her
poetry contains more line-breaks within the lines and it is done through the use of commas. Even
to pause or emphasize, she uses commas. Another feature of her style is that she uses line-
spacing and indentation a lot in order to emphasize on her writing and the meaning of her
poems. This is the feature that makes her poetry different from the classical poetry. The
traditional-conventional poetry lacks this feature at the greatest. Also, she writes in free-verse
but to make her poems unique, uses internal rhyme in the middle of the lines or in some of the
stanzas of her poems.
Analysis of Mary Oliver’s Poems on three levels of language
Given below is the analysis of her poems to support the argument provided about the
idiosyncratic style of Mary Oliver. The poems taken are: Singapore, August, Lillies, Aunt Leaf
and Sleeping in the Forest. These poems are analyzed using three levels of language:
Graphological, Phonological and Lexico-Semantic Levels of
Language
Significance of style in poetry:
Today, poetry remains a significant part of art and culture. Poetry is written to share ideas,
express emotions and to evoke a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience. Poems
carries different styles. The “style” in poetry refers to all the choices that are made to create the
poem’s meaning. Style can incorporate technical choices, such as using short or long lines and
phrases, varying or omitting punctuation, or a set rhythm or rhyme scheme. Style can include
poetic choices such as diction, form, and central idea. All these factors contribute to a reader’s
overall experience reading a poem, and they make up its style. Style in poetry involves the
techniques a poet uses to convey meaning, tone and feeling in the poems. Poets in every literary
era (classical to contemporary) uses their individual and unique style in writing their poems.
What is Idiosyncratic Analysis?
The idiosyncratic analysis shows the special characteristics of writer’s writing style which
distinguishes it from other writers. The way of expressing the ideas and thoughts of a person is
affected by his/her true personality directly or indirectly. This type of analysis provides a clear
picture of writer’s personality and mind. Buffon’s famous saying says that “style is the man
himself” means that style is writer’s individuality in the world of literature presented through
language. From the surface to the depth of the word, there are a bunch of meanings in it. All
these hidden meanings are the reflection of writer’s true personality. The writers develop their
unique style to emphasize their hidden meaning or to break an old certain pattern. The language
of the poetry expresses the meanings in a twisted manner. It is the feature which distinguish the
writers by the way they express their ideas in a twisted manner.
Mary Jane Oliver:
,Mary Jane Oliver was an American poet. She was born on September, 10, 1935 in Ohio. She
was a brilliant student and attended both Ohio State University and Vassar College, but did not
receive a degree from either institution. She started writing poetry at the age of 14. Her poetry is
often centered around her experiences growing up. Her work is characterized by nature rather
than the human-world, stemming from her lifelong passion for solitary walks in the wild. As
Maxine Kumin wrote, “Mary Oliver was an indefatigable guide to the natural world”. Oliver’s
poetry focused on the quiet occurrences of nature. She died on January, 17, 2019. She was
declared to be the best-selling poet in the year 2007. She won National Book Award and the
Pulitzer Prize.
Mary Oliver’s Idiosyncratic Style:
Mary Oliver has become a favorite of poetry readers of all ages for her lyrical, intimate and
sensitive poems, many of which use nature as a lens for exploring the spectrum of human
emotions, from love and joy to sorrow and despair. Part of the key to Oliver’s appeal is her
accessibility: she writes in blank verse in a conversational style, with no typographical
gimmicks. But an equal part is that she offers her readers an intense spiritual release that they
might not have realized they are looking for. Mary Oliver was a contemporary poet, writes blank
verse in conversational style and brings her readers on a spiritual journey through nature. Oliver,
inspired by Shelly, Keats and Whitman had become a euphoric poet.
The main focus of her mostly all the poems is nature. She was often considered an old-fashioned
poet because of her poems entirely based on nature. Nature, being a central idea is a pattern of
old poems therefore, critics did not consider her an up-to-date contemporary poet. Oliver takes
the audience on a spiritual journey which is an encounter with nature. Also, her poems often end
with a moral. Her poems go through a smooth and gentle touch giving its audience a sense of
calmness. People have deep love and understanding for her poems as they are easily relatable
with their personal experiences. The simplicity in the language of her poems makes them
comprehendible by everyone. Her focus is on communicating her ideas through simple words
rather than creating just a fancy poem.
, The idiosyncratic style of Oliver acts as a mirror of her true love for the beauty of nature. Unlike
the classical poets, Oliver’s concept and depiction is nature is simpler in the sense that she does
not glorify nature but she keeps it natural using simpler language with a lot of adjectives related
to nature. Her use of nature in her poems in different and convey deep message such as purpose
of life, essence of humanity, nature and the self, beauty of natural surroundings without
technology, and so on. She uses a lot of beautiful images of nature in her poetry. She uses nature
both symbolically as well as subject matter of her poetry. Even the titles of her poems are simple
but related to nature.
Moreover, her style of writing is distinctive from other writers. She mostly writes in narrative
style and provides a subjective point of view based on her experiences. Her story-telling and
thought-process go side-by-side in her poem. In addition to this, she shifts a lot in her poems.
The structure of her poems goes back-and forth in terms of real and fantasy.
She uses many stylistic techniques in her nature poetry. Her poetry is filled more with
metaphors, similes and nature imagery. The most significant feature of her poems is the
irregular line-count in the stanza. Each and every stanza differs in the number of lines. Also, her
poetry contains more line-breaks within the lines and it is done through the use of commas. Even
to pause or emphasize, she uses commas. Another feature of her style is that she uses line-
spacing and indentation a lot in order to emphasize on her writing and the meaning of her
poems. This is the feature that makes her poetry different from the classical poetry. The
traditional-conventional poetry lacks this feature at the greatest. Also, she writes in free-verse
but to make her poems unique, uses internal rhyme in the middle of the lines or in some of the
stanzas of her poems.
Analysis of Mary Oliver’s Poems on three levels of language
Given below is the analysis of her poems to support the argument provided about the
idiosyncratic style of Mary Oliver. The poems taken are: Singapore, August, Lillies, Aunt Leaf
and Sleeping in the Forest. These poems are analyzed using three levels of language:
