{"id":62,"date":"2023-04-20T00:22:11","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T04:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/ourworlds\/?page_id=62"},"modified":"2023-04-25T12:55:10","modified_gmt":"2023-04-25T16:55:10","slug":"mary","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/ourworlds\/mary\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary"},"content":{"rendered":"

After parting ways with Lorraine Hansberry, Molly traveled to Steepletop, NY, the home of the late Edna St. Vincent Millay, to take photographs. Also there for a visit was Mary Oliver, who had previously lived at Steepletop on and off for six years. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Molly Malone Cook, photographer unknown,Molly Malone Cook papers, Sophia Smith Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Edna St. Vincent Millay was openly bisexual during her lifetime, and she developed relationships with women while she lived in Greenwich Village \u2014 just like Lorraine, and Molly, and Mary. [1]<\/a> <\/span><\/b>After she died, her sister Norma inherited her estate and her creative \/ intellectual property. <\/span>Oliver first arrived at Steepletop on a pilgrimage when she was only 17, and stayed to organize the late poet\u2019s papers and help Edna\u2019s surviving sister, Norma, with the 500 acre estate. [2]<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Molly Malone Cook, photographer unknown,Molly Malone Cook papers, Sophia Smith Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As Oliver tells it, she arrived at Steepletop, found Molly sitting with Norma, and \u201cI took one look and fell, hook and tumble. M. took one look at me, and put on her dark glasses, along with an obvious dose of reserve. She denied this to her dying day, but it was true.\u201d [3]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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Molly Malone Cook with Norma, Molly Malone Cook papers, Sophia Smith Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

However, after looking at the back of one of the photograph prints Molly had brought for Norma, Mary discovered that she lived across the street from Molly in Greenwich Village, and they began to see each other. Despite Molly\u2019s initial reserve, they started to build their own love story \u2014 their own world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mary Oliver with Norma, Molly Malone Cook papers, Sophia Smith Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Life In Provincetown<\/b><\/h1>\n

After a stay in London during the early 1960s, Mary rejoined Molly in Provincetown, where the two made their home for several decades.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mary Oliver photographed by Molly Malone Cook, Molly Malone Cook papers, Sophia Smith Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Molly operated a photography gallery with a bookstore attached for several years, before working as an assistant to a writer, and then, finally, as Mary Oliver\u2019s own literary agent. Mary wrote poems, publishing her first collection in 1963 \u2014 she went on to win the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. [4]<\/a> She dedicated many of her collections to <\/span>Molly Malone Cook. (In her poems and prose, Mary refers to Molly as \u201cM.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n

While Mary Oliver\u2019s poems emphasize the importance of attention \u2014 indeed, she writes while<\/span> \u201cit was my pleasure to notice such things,\u201d it was \u201cwatching M. when she was taking photographs, and watching her in the darkroom, and no less watching the intensity and openness with which she dealt with friends, and strangers too, taught me what real attention is about. Attention without feeling, I began to learn, is only a report. An openness \u2014 an empathy was necessary if the attention was to matter. Such openness and empathy M. had in abundance, and gave away freely.\u201d [5]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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Mary Oliver photographed by Molly Malone Cook, Molly Malone Cook papers, Sophia Smith Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mary Oliver, describing her life in Provincetown with Molly: [6]<\/a><\/p>\n

For all those years we lived, in the summers, in a converted boathouse on the property of the Segura family. Closer to the street is the Segura home; in front of us is the cottage Lawrence Segura built originally for the artist Blanche Lazzell. That’s gone now, and the boathouse (we are sitting on the stoop) is gone too. And Blanche Lazzell is gone and Molly is gone, but I am here to tell you what a wonderful family the Seguras were and are, and what a delicious time we had inside that simple, sweet, one-room home.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Mary Oliver photographed by Molly Malone Cook, Molly Malone Cook papers, Sophia Smith Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Often I would drive Molly out to Herring Cove in the early morning, where she would spend the day swimming, reading, being alone with the sea that she loved, as I judged, with an immeasurable love. Then I would appear again in the late afternoon, with the dogs. Bear and Luke, and a picnic supper, having spent my day roaming the woods, the dunes, and the ponds, looking and scribbling. And 1 would tell how my day had been and Molly would tell how her day had been, and that was the great part of our life\u2014the going apart and the coming together again, the talking and the telling…<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Mary Oliver photographed by Molly Malone Cook, Molly Malone Cook papers, Sophia Smith Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After Molly died in 2005 from lung cancer, Mary put together a joint memoir, Our Word<\/em>, <\/em>composed of Molly\u2019s photographs and Mary\u2019s prose and poems. This glimpse into their intimate and intricate world is the namesake for this exhibit, and, indeed, an invaluable testament on what it means to love.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mary lived in the natural world, while Molly lived in a world of people, but in their home, they merged their differences into a world all of their own. In <\/span>Our World<\/span><\/i>, Mary writes that \u201cWe were talkers about our work, our pasts, our friends, our ideas ordinary and far-fetched. We would often wake before there was light in the sky and make coffee and let our minds rattle our tongues\u2026Not many nights or early mornings later, we would do the same. It was a forty-year conversation.\u201d [7]<\/a><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

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Mary Oliver photographed by Molly Malone Cook, Molly Malone Cook papers, Sophia Smith Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Further Research<\/h2>\n

To learn more, you can explore:<\/strong><\/p>\n