Lineation, repetition and tropes are the effective constituents of the poems in American Primitive.* Mary Oliver, using the aforementioned poetic techniques, transforms otherwise commonplace free verse into lyrical and imagistic elegies. For example, "The Sea" begins with the rhythmic lines, "Stroke by / stroke my / body remembers that life and cries for / the lost parts of itself" (1 - 4). Anaphora counters the enjambment between the first and second lines with the result that the reader/listener actually feels as though he/she is swimming. The pace quickens through the third line and into the fourth line--as the speaker is remembering--until the reader/listener encounters an end-stop, a hyphen. The pace slackens again when the reader/listener encounters a comma separating a spondee: "fins, gills" (5).
Sometimes Oliver repeats individual words and phrases within lines. "Something" begins with alliteration: "Somebody skulking the yard / stumbles against a stone, it stutters / across the dark boards of the night / and we know. We know" (1 - 4). The internal repetition of the phrase "we know" echoes the sound of the stone. More often, however, Oliver uses anaphora to create rhythm and to make her endings powerful. In "Vultures" the repetition of infinitives in three successive lines (6 - 8) establishes a rhythm that she breaks with the multisyllabic word "resurrection" (9). The colon stresses the word's importance. The phrase "no one" appears internally three times--in lines 9, 13 and 20--as well as the word "them"--in lines 28, 30 and 31--creating tension. Oliver employs anaphora near the end of the poem:
however wise the doctrine,
however magnificent the cycles,
however ultimately sweet
the huddle of death to fuel
those powerful wings. (32 - 36)
Oliver is restating the ideas in lines six through nine, which makes the poem's structure correlate with its theme.
Oliver portrays the notion of resurrection in "Vultures" both sonically and imagistically. Furthermore, throughout the collection, philosophical abstractions become concrete by way of tropes. The mundane association of love with flowers seems less cliche in "Cold Poem" because she imagistically portrays love as egocentric in the ultimate line, "crushed red flowers" (24). Although Oliver compares lust to flowers in "An Old Whorehouse"--"It would be years before / we'd learn how effortlessly / sin blooms, then softens, / like any bed of flowers" (15 - 18)--she does such in a unique way.
Any poet contemplating free verse as a means of expression needs to study Oliver's techniques. She concretely and uniquely depicts abstract concepts. She creates unity via repetition. Her linear breaks simulate motion and control emotion.
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*Mary Oliver, American Primitive (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1979).
