Pulitzer Prize winner; nature, animal lover Mary Oliver dies at 83 in Florida

Mary Oliver, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose rapturous odes to nature and animal life brought her critical acclaim and popular affection, has died. She was 83. Bill Reichblum, Oliver's literary executor, says she died Thursday at her home in Hobe Sound, Florida. The case of death was lymphoma.

Author of more than 15 poetry and essay collections, Oliver wrote brief, direct pieces that sang of her worship of the outdoors and disdain for greed and other human crimes. One of her favourite adjectives was "perfect," and rarely did she apply it to people. Her muses were owls and butterflies, frogs and geese, the changes of the seasons, the sun and the stars.