The Soundscape of the Cape: Mary Oliver’s Ecocentric Mysticism

The essay explores Mary Oliver’s soundscapes in the attempt to ascertain if they may add to our comprehension of her poetry, in particular of its central core, which is defined as an “ecocentric mysticism.” The analysis focuses on Oliver’s collection Owls and Other Fantasies (2003), in which the poet enacts various forms of communication with the birds that animate her poems. The aim of the study is to demonstrate that soundscapes are a way for Oliver to show how “language” may be viewed in more than one (human) perspective, and to probe its status as a marker of species differentiation.