Mary Rose O'Reilley

Mary Rose O'Reilley. Courtesy MPRnews.

Mary Rose O'Reilley is an American poet, academic, and writer of non-fiction.

Life

O'Relley was born in Pampa, Texas, and educated in Roseville and Saint Paul, Minnesota. She was raised a Catholic, and served as a novice in a religious community.

She is now a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). She has spent time in Buddhist practice, in particular under Thich Nhat Hanh. She graduated from the College of St. Catherine and completed graduate work at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

From 1978 to 2006, she taught English and environmental studies at St. Thomas College.

She lives in Saint Paul.

Writing

Cold Front: "The word "soul" is printed fifteen times in Mary Rose O’Reilley’s Walt Whitman Award-winning book, which is probably too many for any single volume of poetry. Predictably, her obsession with the soul signals a preoccupation with death, a well-worn path in poetry that much of O'Reilley's book travels.... At her best, however, O’Reilley undoubtedly manages to recreate and call forth the wild impulse within us all."

Recognition

• 2005 Walt Whitman Award
• Contemplative Studies Grant from the American Council of Learned Societies
• Bush Artist Grant
• McKnight Award of Distinction.

Publications

Poetry

• Half Wild. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0-8071-3162-6.

Non-fiction

• The Peaceable Classroom (foreword by Peter Elbow). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers, 1993.
• Radical Presence: Teaching as contemplative practice. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers, 1998.
• The Barn at the End of the World: The apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist shepherd (memoir). Milkweed Editions, 2000. ISBN 978-1-57131-254-9
• The Love of Impermanent Things: A threshold ecology. Milkweed Editions, 2006. ISBN 978-1-57131-283-9

See also

• List of U.S. poets

External links

Poems

• "The Plain Speech". Orion Magazine. March/April 2009. http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/poem/4421/. 
• "The Abandoned Farm". Poetry. March 2007. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=179345. 
• Alice Peck, ed (2008). "Key Lime Pie". Bread, Body, Spirit. SkyLight Paths Publishing. ISBN 978-1-59473-242-3. http://books.google.com/?id=Fsn4P6hyH48C&pg=PA138&lpg=PA138&dq=Mary+Rose+O%E2%80%99Reilley. 
• Mary Rose O'Reilley profile & 3 poems at the Academy of American Poets
• Mary Rose O'Reilley at the Poetry Foundation

Books

• Mary Rose O'Reilley at Amazon.com