"I"

Oliver's poems are written almost exclusively in the first person. The poet's deeply personal and internally consistent meditations on the nature of life, beauty, and truth leave little room for the artifice needed to construct a character to speak these words, leaving little doubt that the "I" of the poems is Oliver herself. However, the "I" of the poems could be a representation of Oliver that she deploys for poetic means, and not necessarily an explicit recreation of herself as a person.

The Loved One

There are any number of "you"s addressed in Oliver's poems, but there are a handful that clearly refer to a loved one with whom the speaker shares an intimate life. That this figure remains mostly in the background of these poems, but appears occasionally as a figure of great importance, highlights that while there is something extremely intimate in the big questions...