The Black Snake
Although Mary Oliver has earned a reputation
as a nature poet, her work extends beyond
simple descriptions of natural beauty to ven-
ture into larger philosophical questions about
life. In ‘‘The Black Snake,’’ Oliver contemplates
the connectedness of all creatures, the inevita-
bility of death, and the optimism of life for
itself. This poem first appeared in Oliver’s
1979 collectionTwelve Moons,avolumethat
firmly established herpoetic voice. According
to Anthony Manousos, writing inAmerican
Poets since World War II,inTwelve Moons
Oliver ‘‘explores natural cycles and processes,
equating them with what is deepest and most
enduring in human experience.’’ As in many of
her other volumes, the poems ofTwelve Moons
often feature an individual animal who moves
Oliver to a meditation on some aspect of
human life.
Oliver clearly continued to value ‘‘The Black
Snake’’ in the years following its initial publica-
tion, as she included the poem, along with sev-
eral others fromTwelve Moons, in her 1992 book
New and Selected Poems. The poem has been
widely anthologized and is well known among
those familiar with Oliver’s work. For readers
approaching Oliver for the first time, ‘‘The Black
Snake’’ offers an excellent introduction to this
important poet’s views on life, death, and the
connectedness of all living things.
21MARY OLIVER
1979