An Essential Poetry Writing Bundle: Mary Oliver, Tracy K. Smith, Dorianne Laux

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) was born in Maple Heights, Ohio, and became one of the most widely read American poets of her generation. Her work is grounded in close, contemplative attention to the natural world — birds, flowers, grasses, and the rhythms of the seasons — and asks persistent questions about how to live with meaning and awareness. Her collection American Primitive (Little, Brown, 1983) won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. New and Selected Poems (Beacon Press, 1992) won the National Book Award. Her other major collections include Why I Wake Early (2004) and Upstream (2016). She studied briefly at Ohio State University and Vassar College and was a longtime resident of Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Tracy K. Smith (born in Falmouth, Massachusetts) served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019. She received her BA from Harvard University and her MFA from Columbia University. Her collection Life on Mars (Graywolf, 2011) won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her other collections include Duende (Graywolf, 2007), winner of the James Laughlin Award, and Wade in the Water (Graywolf, 2018). As Poet Laureate, she brought poetry to rural communities across America through the American Conversations project. She is a professor of creative writing at Harvard University and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Academy of American Poets.

Dorianne Laux (born in Augusta, Maine) is a poet known for her frank, emotionally powerful poems about working-class life, sexuality, violence, and survival. She worked as a sanatorium cook, maid, and gas station attendant before pursuing poetry. She received her MFA from the University of Oregon and teaches in the MFA program at North Carolina State University. Her collections include Awake (BOA Editions, 1990), What We Carry (BOA, 1994), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Book of Men (Norton, 2011), which won the Paterson Poetry Prize. She has received an NEA Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement.