Work
Wild Geese
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About this work
Wild Geese is one of Mary Oliver's best-loved poems, a short work of startling tenderness that has comforted countless readers. It opens with a release from guilt, you do not have to be good, and widens into an invitation to belong to the world simply by being alive and paying attention. Few modern poems are quoted so often or so gratefully.
About the author — Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver (1935 to 2019) was an American poet and Pulitzer Prize winner whose clear, luminous work found the sacred in the natural world. A lifelong walker in the wild, she wrote poems that read like quiet instructions for being alive.
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People also ask
What is the poem Wild Geese about?
Belonging and self-acceptance. Oliver tells the reader they need not earn their place in the world through guilt or perfection; they belong to it simply by living and attending to it.
What is the famous line from Wild Geese?
Its opening, that you do not have to be good, and its assurance that the world offers itself to your imagination and calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting.
Why is Wild Geese so loved?
Because it offers release from shame and a gentle sense of belonging in a few clear lines, which is why it is so often shared in hard times.