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    A Study Guide for Mary Oliver's "The Eskimos Have No Word for War"
    A Study Guide for Mary Oliver's "The Eskimos Have No Word for War"
    A Study Guide for Mary Oliver's "The Eskimos Have No Word for War"
    Ebook37 pages26 minutes

    A Study Guide for Mary Oliver's "The Eskimos Have No Word for War"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Mary Oliver's "The Eskimos Have No Word for War," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 28, 2016
    ISBN9781535836463
    A Study Guide for Mary Oliver's "The Eskimos Have No Word for War"

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      A Study Guide for Mary Oliver's "The Eskimos Have No Word for War" - Gale

      14

      The Esquimos Have No Word for War

      Mary Oliver

      1992

      Introduction

      The Esquimos Have No Word for ‘War’ is a free-verse lyric poem by Mary Oliver, perhaps the bestselling contemporary poet in America. Oliver is known for writing in the romantic tradition of poets such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whit-man, Emily Dickinson, and Robert Frost. She is widely known as a nature poet, and a large percentage of her poetry and prose revolves around humans' spiritual connection to nature.

      The Esquimos referred to in the title are the Inuit, an aboriginal (native) people of the Arctic who mainly live in Canada, Greenland, and Alaska. Many Inuit consider Eskimo to be a pejorative term; in Inuktitut, the Inuit language, it translates to eaters of raw meat. Much preferred is Inuit, which translates simply as the people.

      Published in Oliver's 1992 National Book Award–winning collection New and Selected Poems, Esquimos is typical of Oliver's poetry in its depiction of natural elements and elevation of a spiritual connection with the land over modernization. It deals with themes of language and examines the notion of cultural identity by contrasting the simple life of the Inuit with the warring, aggressive societies of other parts of the world. In its style, subject matter, and technical form, The Esquimos Have No Word for ‘War’ sits firmly in the romantic tradition passed down from the nature poets of the nineteenth century.

      Author Biography

      Mary Oliver was born on September 10, 1935, in Maple Heights, Ohio, on the outskirts of Cleveland. As a teenager, she visited the home of deceased poet Edna St. Vincent Millay in upstate New York, eventually moving into the estate with Millay's sister, Norma, to help sort the work and correspondence that Millay had left behind. On a visit to the estate in the late 1950s, she met Molly Malone Cook, a young photographer who later served as Oliver's literary agent. Oliver and Cook began a romantic relationship that lasted until Cook's death in 2005.

      In 1963, at the age of 28, Oliver published her first collection of poetry, No Voyage, and Other Poems. Since that time, Oliver has become one of the best-selling and most well-known poets in America. She has published more than

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