I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded.

The line captures a characteristic tension in Mary Oliver’s public image: a powerful, widely read voice paired with a strong preference for privacy. On its face it is wryly self-deprecating—she wanted anonymity and “sort of” achieved it—yet it also suggests a deliberate artistic stance. To be “left alone” is not mere shyness but a condition for attention to the nonhuman world and to inner life, the sources that animate her poems. The understated phrasing implies that complete withdrawal is impossible once one’s work circulates; the self can recede, but the poems will still be noticed.