The Last Saturday in September: poems for and about Mary Anne, from Ray

Raymond Oliver, retired professor of English at U.C. Berkeley, is a native of New England who moved in his late teens to California. He has been a poet since early on, later confirming his vocation with a Stegner Fellowship under Yvor Winters at Stanford. He has published several books, including "Beowulf: A likeness", and individual poems widely in well-known periodicals. His primary medium is English, but he has also written a substantial number of poems in French and German; four of each are included in this collection. Mary Anne McPherson Oliver was born in Montgomery, Alabama. After graduating from Sweet Briar and the University of Alabama, she taught in France before going for graduate work in French to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she met Raymond. Mary Anne is a theologian and the first woman to receive her PhD from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. She is the author of "Conjugal Spirituality". Raymond Oliver strives to capture crystalline moments with his words. Every kind of reality is his quarry. Since meeting Mary Anne, she has increasingly become his muse. Her observations and insights, corrections and comments have been his touchstones, guiding him closer to the beauty of all there is. Without her there is the risk of nothingness. With her, there is everything. These poems are dedicated to her.