Mary Oliver

The Storm

existence free verse joyful

The Storm - meaning Summary

Joy Written in Snow

Mary Oliver's poem finds a joyful lesson in a dog racing through fresh snow. The dog's energetic tracks become a kind of writing that expresses physical freedom, pleasure, and complete presence in the natural world. The speaker admires this wordless expression and suggests that the animal communicates bodily delight more directly than human language can.

Read Complete Analyses

Now through the white orchard my little dog romps, breaking the new snow with wild feet. Running here running there, excited, hardly able to stop, he leaps, he spins until the white snow is written upon in large, exuberant letters, a long sentence, expressing the pleasures of the body in this world. Oh, I could not have said it better.

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