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Mary Oliver's Singapore

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Mary Oliver's Singapore
Image of Nature

In the Mary Oliver poem “Singapore”, she speaks about how some people expect all poems to only be about nature and obvious happiness. However, she shows that with imagery they can be found in the least likely of places. She talks about this woman she sees in a Singapore airport restroom cleaning an ashtray in the toilet and she compares this image to a vision of nature. In this poem, the author uses a collaboration of imagination, nature imagery, and what she physically sees to compare the woman and the work she is doing to nature and happiness. The structure of Oliver’s poem is setup to go back and forth between what is really happening and what is being made up in her imagination. In Mary Oliver’s “Singapore”, she shows


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