Earlier this month, poet Mary Oliver — who won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and was for many years based in Provincetown, Mass., — died at the age of 83.

In the latest installment of "Village Voice," Boston Public Radio's recurring conversation about poetry and how it can help us make sense of the news of the day, poet Richard Blanco remembered Oliver's life and work. Blanco is the fifth presidential inaugural poet in U.S. history. His new book, "How To Love A Country," deals with various sociopolitical issues that shadow America and will be released in March by Beacon Press.

In Oliver's poetry, communion with nature was often a catalyst for learning powerful truths or finding meaning in life, Blanco explained.

"Every poet, usually there's something early in their lives that begins to inform their entire body of work, a kind of obsession. For her, it was to go out in the woods and build huts and write poetry. It was a way of escape, but also a way of saving herself, I think," Blanco said.

Read more: Provincetown Remembers Mary Oliver

"There's little hints of that trauma or pain as we all have, but it breaks through that, and nature is the vehicle for that in many of her poems," he added.

Oliver in 2012 told NPR that "poetry, to be understood, must be clear. It mustn't be fancy." That style resonated with legions of readers; The New York Times in 2007 described her as "far and away, this country's best-selling poet."

"There's this idea as of late that to be accessible means to be simple, or the opposite: That if something is accessible, it can't be complicated," Blanco said.

"I think it's the poet's job ... to distill that world for us, to see in a grasshopper something that nobody else can see," he said.

Follow along with the poems discussed, in order: