Prompt #331 – In Memory of Mary Oliver

 

On January 17, 2019, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Mary Oliver passed away. She was my favorite poet, one whose poems I return to again and again. My cousin Sandy Hulme gave me a copy of Mary Oliver's book Devotions for my birthday last November, and it sits with pride of place on my desk next to me as I write this. 

Although critics have been divided about her work, she has awed scores of readers with her linguistic precision and understated depth. The NY Times said that Ms. Oliver's work has an almost “homiletic quality.” I've often felt that as I read her poems, each of which is a kind of "teaching." Importantly, her poems are characterized by the simple perfection of “unadorned language” and uncompromised accessibility. Always profoundly human, she wrote with a deep sense of living in kinship with the natural world and its creatures. Ms. Oliver once described herself as “the kind of old-fashioned poet who walks the woods most days, accompanied by dog and notepad.”

The poem below is one of Ms. Oliver’s most well-known. I’d like you to read it and then to reflect on it’s meanings. Do you find anything in the poem that speaks to you personally?

Wild Geese

  By Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

In literature, wild geese have symbolized compassion, community, bravery, communication, determination, and caring, as well as an individual path in life. In her poem, “Wild Geese,” Mary Oliver tells us that one doesn’t have to worry about being good or repentant but, rather, to truly love the life you’ve been given. She recognizes that everyone will encounter difficulties in life and that sharing those hardships with others is important. 

This poem reminds us that life goes on despite our human frailties and weaknesses; wild geese continue to follow their paths; and each of us keeps our position in the world. Like wild geese, our place in the natural world offers itself to us.

In addition to situating and illuminating what it means to be human, Ms. Oliver reminds us to keep going on despite life’s challenges, to look within ourselves, and to seek the beauty and peace of the natural world.

Ms. Oliver draws us into the divinity of the natural world. She also invites us to consider what makes a “good life.” She offers her readers a sense that the world is “…announcing your place in the family of things,” that all is as it should be. There is order in the natural world and in human experience, no matter how lonely human experience may be at times.  Whenever I read a Mary Oliver poem, I’m reminded of Julian of Norwich who wrote, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Suggestions:

1. Does anything in “Wild Geese” speak to you personally? If so, write down what and how.

2.  Think about your personal world and the natural world. Do they share anything in common? Do you ever turn to nature for comfort and peace?

3. Choose something in nature that you love, and think about why you love it (spring rain, the hush of snow falling, sparrows or cardinals, lilacs, a river, mountains, etc.).  Alternatively, you might consider a beloved pet or a favorite wild animal.

4. Free write for a while about that natural “something.”

 

5. In her poem “Spring,” Ms. Oliver wrote,“There is only one question; / how to love this world.” How do you love this world?

6. Now, begin a poem that matches or comes close to Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” in form:

one stanza (stichic form)

18 lines

free verse

no internal or external rhyme

7. Let your poem develop as you write it, give it its “head” and let it take you where it wants to go.

Tips:

1. When you begin writing, don’t worry about technique, spelling, punctuation, or form. Just write. There’s always time for revision and refining after you’ve written your drafts. Most importantly, get your thoughts and feelings onto the paper first.

2. If you’d prefer to read and not write, a list of Mary Oliver poems follows. Enjoy!

Other Poems by Mary Oliver
(http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/mary_oliver/poems):

1	When Death Comes
2	The Journey
3	A Meeting
4	The Summer Day
5	Little Summer Poem Touching The Subject Of Faith
6	Cold Poem
7	Music
8	The Sun
9	The Chance To Love Everything
10	Next Time
11	Poem (The spirit likes to dress up...)
12	The Fish
13	Morning Poem
14	The Swan
15	Knife
16	At Blackwater Pond
17	Wild Geese
18	Honey At The Table
19	Flare
20	Black Oaks
21	At Great Pond
22	Sleeping In The Forest
23	Mockingbirds
24	Some Things The World Gave
25	The Buddha's Last Instruction
26	Yes! No!
27	An Afternoon In The Stacks
28	After Arguing Against The Contention That Art Must Come From Discontent
29	Egrets
30	Lilies
31	Peonies
32	August
33	Fall Song
34	A Visitor
35	Moles
36	Turtle
37	Beyond the Snow Belt
38	Moccasin Flowers
39	Morning Glories
40	Marengo
41	The Family
42	Heron Rises From The Dark, Summer Pond
43	Climbing The Chagrin River
44	Aunt Leaf
45	The Humpbacks
46	Why I Wake Early
47	Dogfish
48	The Kookaburras
49	Sand Dabs, Five
50	That Sweet Flute John Clare
51	Clapp's Pond
52	The Kingfisher
53	Happiness
54	Walking To Oak-Head Pond, And Thinking Of The Ponds I Will Visit In The Next Days And Weeks
55	Toward The Space Age
56	Gannets
57	Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?
58	Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me
59	A Dream of Trees
60	Sunrise
61	Mindful
62	One
63	Daisies
64	Two Kinds of Deliverance
65	Snow Geese
66	A Letter from Home
67	Snowy Night
68	Hummingbird Pauses at the Trumpet Vine
69	Lightning
70	The Lily
71	The Rapture
72	Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches
73	Blossom
74	White Night
75	Mushrooms
76	On Winter's Margin
77	Picking Blueberries, Austerlitz, New York,1957
78	Such Singing in the Wild Branches
79	Little Owl Who Lives in the Orchard
80	Starlings in Winter
81	Song of the Builders
82	Skunk Cabbage
83	Stanley Kunitz
84	The Moths
85	The Truro Bear
86	The Lark
87	Catbird

In her poem “When Death Comes” Ms. Oliver wrote,

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

RIP, dear Mary Oliver! You were always more than a visitor, and I'm grateful.