When Death Comes Mary Oliver Analysis

Mary Oliver was born in 1935, in the city of Maple Highs, Ohio. No Voyage and Other Poems was the first of numerous volumes, including New and Selected Poems, which won the National Book Award. The Poet Maxine Kumin calls Oliver “an indefatigable guide to the nature world”, since a lot of her work involves connecting to nature. When Death Comes is a poem about death and accepting it rather than running from it, and was written in 1992.
She starts the poem by describing how death is not avoidable, it’s bound to come to everyone at some point in their life’s, “Like a hungry bear in the autumn” or “Icebergs between the shoulder blades” (Oliver, 1052). All these things are meant to happen, like death. “To buy me, and snaps the purse shut”(Oliver,

1052), here she is saying death may come with a price and that price could be her leaving this earth even though she may have left a mark. Also she asked a rhetorical question when it comes to death “What is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness” (Oliver, 1052). She’s expressing her curiosity in death and shows no fear in it and labels it as a place rather than just a part of life. While some rather not imagine the fact of death, she is embracing it which many people cannot do, why run away from something when it’s part of our destiny.
From lines 12 through 20, she uses figure of speech multiple times in matching death with something, an example would be, “And therefore I look at everything as a brotherhood and sisterhood”(Oliver, 1052).

Here she is saying that she views everything as a part of a community, that everyone came together as a community, or everyone came together as one. “And I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility”(Oliver, 1052), here she is saying that time is just a state of mind, once you die, time does not matter because you will spend the rest in your life in death, a place where time does not matter. “And I think of each life as a flower, common as a field daisy” (Oliver, 1052), here she is comparing life to a daisy. Flowers are known for having a short lived life, they bloom, and they're beautiful, then they're gone. “And each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending as all music does, towards silence”, (Oliver, 1052), here she is saying, yes we talk but every time we do we are surrounded by silence, it’s always around us, no matter how much noise we make. These descriptions seem to prove that death can turn itself in many forms. “Each body a lion of courage, and something precious on earth” (Oliver, 1052), here she is making the claim that, as humans who and what we are to this world, we are all unique and important to this world in one way or

another.
In the last few stanza she describes what her thoughts on what she wants to ultimately get out of death.

“When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real”(Oliver, 1052), here she is saying that she was able to live an amazing life and does not regret anything, she has lived her life, the way she wanted to and she is proud of that. “Don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument”(Oliver, 1052), here she is saying that she doesn’t want to fight it, be scared of it, or be intimidated by it. Rather she is facing it and accepts it as her destiny. “I don't want to end up simply having visited this world”(Oliver, 1052), here she is saying she wants to make herself at home before she leaves to the next world, since her life was temporary while she lived, she will be settled in death when it comes towards her.
In the story by Mary Oliver, When Death Comes, she is describing death and she is accepting it rather than running from it. At some point in our life’s we will realize we are getting closer to death this poem really explained that it’s meant to happen so rather run, embrace it and live life one step at a

time.