Mary Oliver and Poetry

I took a creative writing class in college that I LOVED, but the poetry unit was harder for me than the story writing part. I found it really difficult to get into an emotionally open space to create poetry for a grade. It felt like a much Bigger Deal than I knew it was but also I knew that poetry meant something to me, so I didn't want to be casual or flippant with it. I'd had a teacher in high school who had everyone in the class take turns reading poetry and while I started thinking deeply about Invictus (still a beautiful beast of a poem, IMO), and Dave Matthews Band lyrics (I was 14 okay!), it got me looking and thinking and noticing that some words in a certain order made me feel things I couldn't previously describe.

Back to the college course, there was a day where we had to read our own work and have it critiqued (kill me), and one person's poem was literally filled with cliche's meant in earnest, almost two per line... I almost died from the agony and from the effort of feeling that had also gone into this poem that I almost self imploded from judgement. After that class I sat in my car writing a children's story that I thought was a totally brand new idea but was just a version of the ugly duckling where the duck turns out to be a good musician and that's pretty much what Happy Feet is too and I hate that movie...and I laugh cried for a minute because I realized then that we are all the same and there are no new ideas, but isn't this life singularly beautiful anyway because we feel things uniquely even if they're the same feeling?

I remember discovering Mary Oliver years later, and feeling like, whoa this is what I've been trying to say, this is the feeling I haven't been able to articulate and a consistent and repeated Yes! This is it. This is life. These words are true and beautiful and good.

​When I found Oliver's poetry I was going through a difficult time in my journey of motherhood where I expected and assumed that my existence as a mother would provide my life's full serving of joy and, well, it didn't. It was, and continues to contribute a significant amount, but it's not a full life's serving. Realizing that felt like many flavors and levels of failure of the deepest and most personal kind and I wallowed. I wallowed hard.

I think I heard about her on a podcast or someone shared a poem from her on Facebook and I was intrigued. So, I checked out all the books I could find from her at the library and read them all and was demolished and put back together. The words she painted with are simple and ordinary and exquisitely exact. I didn't even realize the impact they had on me until looking over them again this morning after hearing Mary Oliver had died.

I will miss her talent and her precision. I am anxious now to get my hands on some of her work to carry around, re-read, underline, stare at, and cry about. Here's a taste of what she could do, I hope you'll look up some more. I'm so grateful for her voice that has been so much to me.

“Ten times a day something happens to me like this - some strengthening throb of amazement - some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.”
― Mary Oliver

“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb. (Don't Hesitate)”
― Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

“Said the river: imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going.”
― Mary Oliver

“The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.”
― Mary Oliver