Yesterday, much-loved poet Mary Oliver died of lymphoma. She was 83. As NPR posted in its obituary, “Oliver won many awards for her poems, which often explore the link between nature and the spiritual world; she also won a legion of loyal readers who found solace and joy in her work.”
I first learned of Oliver’s death through a comment that Beth posted on yesterday’s Spark and Spitfire post. My first thought was — seriously — “Now what do I do?” Like many of my beloveds and other women around my age, Mary Oliver was an eloquent companion who encouraged us to be, like her, “a bride married to amazement.” Now that she’s gone, will we still be able to be amazed?
In her honor, I am posting the first Oliver poem that hooked me — “Winter Sleep.” It is from an early collection, Twelve Moons, first published in 1979:
MARY OLIVER — always a family name for millions. Rest in winter sleep.
Please post your favorite Oliver poems or just the titles, and I will try to find and post the poems. Let us know why they mean so much to you. Thank you.
When my mother died, my friend, Lisa, sent me this Mary Oliver poem:
A PRETTY SONG
From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, no coming out of it.
Which is the only way to love, isn’t it?
This isn’t a play ground, this is
earth, our heaven, for a while.
Therefore I have given precedence
to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods
that hold you in the center of my world.
And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.
And I say to my heart: rave on.
Rave on, beloveds.
Another favorite of mine. FYI — copying this into this platform will skew the spacing. The lines, as Oliver wrote them — are all center-spaced:
HERON RISES FROM THE DARK, SUMMER POND
So heavy
is the long-necked, long-bodied heron,
always it is a surprise
when her smoke-colored wings
open
and she turns
from the thick water,
from the black sticks
of the summer pond,
and slowly
rises into the air
and is gone.
Then, not for the first or the last time,
I take the deep breath
of happiness, and I think
how unlikely it is
that death is a hole in the ground,
how improbable
that ascension is not possible,
though everything seems so inert, so nailed
back into itself –
the muskrat and his lumpy lodge,
the turtle,
the fallen gate.
And especially it is wonderful
that the summers are long
and the ponds so dark and so many,
and therefore it isn’t a miracle
but the common thing,
this decision,
this trailing of the long legs in the water,
this opening up of the heavy body
into a new life: see how the sudden
gray-blue sheets of her wings
strive toward the wind: see how the clasp of nothing
takes her in.
(from What Do We Know)
Thank you for honoring Mary Oliver here. I have been so glad to see how many of my Facebook friends have honored her in their posts. I had no idea that we had a love of her poetry in common. She touched and will continue to touch a lot of lives with her words.
I have many favorite poems, including the Heron which you posted above. The world Mary Oliver described in many of her poems is so similar to my beloved northern Wisconsin, that just reading them brings me the peace of that place. Her poems are a refuge for me from an often chaotic world. They are a tender respite in the midst of so much cruelty.
She has also written innumerable oft quoted iconic lines, including: “Listen, are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?” from Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Branches; “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” from The Summer Day; and from When Death Comes, “When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.” and “I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”
And finally these words, which she has now lived fully, from In Blackwater Woods: “To live in the world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, let it go.”
Thank you, dear Beth, for reading this post and taking some time to thoughtfully comment.
I spent some time today randomly choosing an Oliver poetry volume and then randomly choosing a poem in that volume. Not one missed the amazement mark.