Poem Analysis: "Mushrooms" by Mary Oliver

Today, I would like to introduce a poem called "Mushrooms" by Mary Oliver that I analyzed with my partner, Nodoka. 

Before introducing the poem, I would like to introduce the poet, Mary Oliver. She was an American poet who won numerous awards such as National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The theme of her poems is nearly focused on the connection between nature and people, which could also appear in this poem, "Mushrooms". 

Next, I would like to introduce the poem. Nodoka and I divided the poem into 4 sections in order to analyze it easier. 

Mushrooms

Rain, and then
the cool pursed
lips of the wind
draw them
out of the ground -
red and yellow skulls
pummeling upward
through leaves,
through grasses,
through sand; 

astonishing
in their suddenness,
their quietude,
their wetness, they appear
on fall mornings, some
balancing in the earth
on one hoof
packed with poison,
others billowing
chunkily, and delicious -

those who know
walk out to gather, choosing
the benign from flocks
of glitterers, sorcerers,
russulas,
panther caps,
shark-white death angels
in their town veils
looking innocent as sugar
but full of paralysis:

to eat
is to stagger down
fast as mushrooms themselves
when they are done being perfect
and overnight
slide back under the shining
fields of rain.

In the first paragraph, the author is trying to describe how the mushroom grows in nature. I could easily imagine the growing process of the mushroom because of the word choices (ex: red and yellow skulls) that would be a personification. 

In the second paragraph, it shows the variety of mushrooms. By using contrast, it tells us that some of the mushrooms are poisonous and some of them are edible. 

In the third paragraph, it describes the difference between poisonous and edible mushrooms more deeply. For example, the pairing of the word"death" and "angels" may be a metaphor that means, attracting us with their beautiful white appearance which looks like an angel, but actually, it would kill us when we eat it. 

And finally, in the last paragraph, I found a simile that says “stagger down fast as mushrooms themselves" which could describe what happens to a person who eats the poisonous mushrooms. So it shows the similarity between mushrooms and humans. 

Overall, this poem describes the natural lifecycle of the mushrooms just by comparing them with humans.