Last week, I posted about Wild Geese, highlighting a Mary Oliver poem and how it hit a home run for me. This week, I worked on another of her poems, The Summer Day, producing this video.
I’ve been diving into Mary Oliver’s poetry a lot, the last few weeks. Reading her touching poems about her dog Percy (read her book Dog Songs) and feeling the warmth of her mind embracing the universal nature which coats all.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.” ― Mary Oliver
Oliver is a first-rate psychologist, as all poets need be. She knows what troubles people and turns them on and off. She’s also a damn good reader of her own poetry, I’ll give her that. It’s rare with poets and view this video with many fine examples.
Although often labeled as a “visionary” or “romantic” poet, Oliver is essentially a deeply religious poet. A pagan of the first order and a pantheist. Her strong repetition, the cadence of her lines, her directness - it all has a spiritual and very prophetic tone. She brings to the poem an other-worldly authority but one that doesn’t come off as dictatorial or pushy.
Her poetry is very sensitive to the “small” things around us, in life. The things on the margins, often unnoticed but which are so important. In this way, she’s remarkably similar to another favorite poet - Wislawa Szymborska.
“Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?” ― Mary Oliver
I’ve been enjoying her poems for their fine sense of the personal, how they evoke feelings common to us all. And mostly, enjoying her poems for their full embrace of the natural world as our equal. Oliver also brings a vulnerability to the written word - a kind of Joni Mitchellnessque quality. I sometimes want to reach out to her and whisper to her, like Kristofferson did to Joni - “Oh Mary! Save something of yourself.”
“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.” ― Mary Oliver
The message and meaning of Mary Oliver’s poems are a much needed tonic for us living out our days in the clothes of materialism and scientism, modern technological hubris. Drink her up - she’ll heal you some.
I hope you enjoy this poem I set to image and video. I urge you to explore the gift, the poems Mary Oliver left us. They keep us connected to mother earth, her gift a green fuse that drives the flower. One we can plug into too.
I’ll end with one of my current favorites of hers - The World I Live In.
I have refused to live
locked in the orderly house of
reasons and proofs.
The world I live in and believe in
is wider than that. And anyway,
what’s wrong with Maybe?You wouldn’t believe what once or
twice I have seen. I’ll just
tell you this:
only if there are angels in your head will you
ever, possibly, see one.+ Mary Oliver
The Summer Day