itself. As Oliver notes in an article for theOhio
Review, ‘‘Through the many possibilities of craft,
the poem comes into its careful existence.’’
‘‘The Black Snake’’ offers a small laboratory
for readers who want to know more about how a
poem’s structure bears impact on its overall
effect. Perhaps one of the most interesting ways
to examine ‘‘The Black Snake’’ is to look closely at
the line structure Oliver chose for her poem,
something the reader might not think to consider.
However, as Stephen Dobyns notes wisely in the
New York Times Book Review, ‘‘Ms. Oliver’s lines
and line breaks completely control the rhythm
and the pacing. She forces us to read her poems
as she meant them to be read.’’
When a reader first looks at ‘‘The Black
Snake,’’ he or she will see that the poem is com-
posed of short lines. The longest lines in the poem
have only ten words each, and most lines are
much shorter. Oliver’s use of the short line is
masterful. The critic Jay Rogoff argues in an
article in theSouthern Reviewthat ‘‘no one alive
uses the short poetic line as effectively or as excit-
ingly, and few other poets working in free verse
have as precise and seductive a sense of rhythm.’’
One way that Oliver achieves this virtuosity of
lining is through her use of pauses, caesura, and
enjambment.
Oliver notes in theOhio Reviewthat ‘‘at the
end of each line there exists—inevitably—a brief
pause. This pause is part of the motion of the
poem, as hesitation is part of dance.’’ When a
line of poetry is end-stopped, that is, completed
with a comma, period, colon, semicolon, or dash,
the pause is pronounced. Oliver suggests that
such end stopping provides ‘‘an instant of inac-
tivity, in which the reader is ‘invited’ to weigh the
information and pleasure of the line.’’ A good
example of this technique can be found in line 3
of ‘‘The Black Snake.’’ The poem has opened with
the snake flowing onto the road and the informa-
tion that the truck is not able to swerve to avoid
hitting the snake. The third line, then, closes with
a dash, a punctuation mark that stops the rhythm
of the poem very abruptly and suddenly, the way
that slamming on the brakes might stop a car.
The reader thus has a moment to understand the
implication of the scene that Oliver has just set up.
At the same time, the dash pushes the reader to
the next line, which begins with the word ‘‘death,’’
written in italics, another device that provides
sudden impact for the reader. The word ‘‘death’’
is immediately followed by a comma, providing
another pause. Thus, on either side of the word
‘‘death’’ is space for a breath as well as the con-
templation of a last breath.LIKE THE SNAKE MOVING UNAWARE INTO
THE ROAD, NOT KNOWING THAT HE IS IN THE LAST
SECONDS OF HIS LIFE, THE READER SLIDES INTO THE
LAST LINE OF THE POEM, SLAMMING INTO THE
PERIOD MARKING THE POEM’S END.’’WHAT
DO I READ
NEXT? The Alphabet of the Trees: A Guide to Nature
Writing(2000), edited by Christian McEwen
and Mark Statman, is a collection of essays
about teaching and learning nature writing.
The book is valuable for teachers, students,
and writers who want to learn more about
how to craft an essay or poem about nature.
Included is an essay by Oliver.
John R. Knott’s bookImagining Wild America
(2002) is a good example of ecocriticism, the
branch of literary criticism that investigates
nature writing. Knott includes a chapter on
Oliver’s work as wellas chapters on Henry
David Thoreau and John Muir, among others.
Mary Oliver’s 2008 volumeRed Bird: Poems
is an excellent example of her work nearly
thirty years after the first publication of
‘‘The Black Snake,’’ providing students the
opportunity to compare and contrast the
poet’s early and later work.
In the 1990s Oliver published two books
about writing and reading poetry,A Poetry
Handbook(1994) andRules for the Dance: A
Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical
Verse(1998). Both books offer insight into
Oliver’s techniques and style and are instruc-
tive for young and old would-be poets.The Black Snake