Jeff Westover, professor in the Department of English Literature, contributed an article to the book “Critical Insights: Ralph Waldo Emerson.” Westover’s contribution, “Writing Dawn and Day in the Work of Mary Oliver and Ralph Waldo Emerson,” explores the ways Oliver’s writing honors Emerson’s legacy.
Both Oliver and Emerson emphasize the importance of nature in their works, and seek an “original relation to the universe.” Westover focuses on depictions of dawn in Oliver’s poetry and how her work connects interacting with the natural world and living a full and meaningful life, in the Emersonian tradition.