Point of View

Oliver’s poems are, almost uniformly, written from the first person. Even poems that are tightly focused on an animal or a personified aspect of the landscape usually include Oliver’s human speaker observing the scene. This juxtaposition of the natural world and the observer provides a constant, low hum of tension in the poems. Oliver’s speaker, who is likely Oliver herself, finds her sense of meaning in life by observing the natural world, but in the act of describing this observation, she sets herself apart from it.

It is possible that the assumption that Oliver’s speaker consistently speaks for Oliver herself is illusory, and partially furnished by the fact that the point of view of so many poems does not provide enough personal details to delineate between characters. However, the personal details that Oliver’s speaker does provide – the poets she admires...