Hey everybody. Welcome to the librarians in the New York Public Library's podcast about books, culture, and what to read next. I am Frank.

And I am Gwen. And we're here to talk about death again.

Not for the first time. Favorite subject because Mary Oliver, the poet, yeah, recently.

We thought we'd do a little impromptu episode about Mary Oliver, a little mini episode,

just because I think her death has impacted a lot of people.

I know it impacted me.

I spent some time weeping at my desk the other day as I was, because I wrote a blog post

about her with lots of links to her books in the library's collection.

And she just was a beautiful poet. And she had a beautiful life.

And I want to read more and know more about her.

But we also thought it would be cool today to talk a little bit about her poetry and read a

couple of her poems.

It's so straight.

I mean, I think almost because of this podcast or I don't even know but I used to have such a problem with poetry

such a block about it because it I felt like I could never understand it it wasn't accessible

to me it wasn't it was maybe forced me to slow down too much which I have that problem but somewhere

in it feels like since we started the podcast, I suddenly, maybe one of the episodes we had to, you suggested it. And I was like, okay. And then when I went back to it, I realized I'm not anxious about this at all anymore. In fact, I was, I'm very excited about it. So whenever, when we talk about it, I feel like some people are listening and like,

oh, poetry episode. Yeah, that would have poet, oh, poetry. That would have been me like 10 years

ago. Like, I thought for a long time I didn't really like poetry. But that actually leads

perfectly to Mary Oliver because her poems are so incredibly accessible. And I don't mean

accessible. I feel don't mean accessible.

I feel like sometimes people use that as a backhanded compliment

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