Mary Oliver MBTI Personality Type
Personality
What personality type is Mary Oliver? Mary Oliver is an ISFP personality type in MBTI, 4w5 - sx/sp - 496 in Enneagram, in Big 5, EII in Socionics.
(Wrote this without too much MBTI knowledge. Leaving it up anyway) Her writing speaks to me in a way that not a lot of poetry does because it's so... practical. She tends to put the facts and sensory details out there, and let readers understand the meaning behind them. She doesn't often speculate or idealize or abstract, but when she does, it's often inspired by sensory facts. Many of her poems (like In Blackwater Woods, The Summer Day, The Swan, etc. etc.) tend to get lost in sensory enjoyment, then come to a deep and meaningful conclusion at the very end. For example, in her poem Wild Geese, she uses the phrase "the world offers itself to your imagination" which certainly sounds like Ne out of context. But that is preceded by multiple lines of descriptions about nature without any abstraction or speculation whatsoever. Meaning is simply inherent and implied. So granted, many of her more popular quotes tend to be very expansive and idealistic, but if you read any of her books you'll see they're mostly about her everyday life, nature, and other such sensory observations. If her poetry isn't Se-Ni then I genuinely have no idea what is. I'm obsessed. "In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be." (lol thanks PDB for censoring b/ondage) "Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river? Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air – An armful of white blossoms, A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned into the b/ondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies, Biting the air with its black beak? Did you hear it, fluting and whistling A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall Knifing down the black ledges? And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds – A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river? And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for? And have you changed your life?" "Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dark trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more than prettiness.” "I know, you never intended to be in this world. But you’re in it all the same. so why not get started immediately. I mean, belonging to it. There is so much to admire, to weep over. And to write music or poems about. Bless the feet that take you to and fro. Bless the eyes and the listening ears. Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste. Bless touching."
Biography
Mary Jane Oliver (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019) was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her work is inspired by nature, rather than the human world, stemming from her lifelong passion for solitary walks in the wild. It is characterised by a sincere wonderment at the impact of natural imagery, conveyed in unadorned language. In 2007 she was declared to be the country's best-selling poet.
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