I try to be good but sometimes a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be. It's impossible not to remember wild an want it back.
Mary OliverRead
If I've done my work well, I vanish completely from the scene. I believe it is invasive of the work when you know too much about the writer.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of the work itself over the identity of the creator.
Mary Oliver suggests that the best art should stand on its own merit, allowing the audience to engage with the work without being influenced by the biography or personality of the artist. By doing so, the artist enables viewers to connect with the piece more deeply, creating a purer form of appreciation that is about the art rather than the artist.
Themes
ArtCreationInvisibilityAuthorshipArtist
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the impact of artists on their work, you might say, 'As Mary Oliver stated, if I've done my work well, I vanish completely from the scene.'
More from Mary Oliver
All quotes βAt the time I was growing up, literature was involved with the so-called confessional poets. And I was not interested in that. I did not think that specific and personal perspective functioned well for the reader at all.
Mary OliverRead
I know the sag of the unfinished poem. And I know the release of the poem that is finished.
Mary OliverRead
For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.
Mary OliverRead
If I have any lasting worth, it will be because I have tried to make people remember what the Earth is meant to look like.
Mary OliverRead
Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.
Mary OliverRead
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