Thinking about poetry, affection, and accessibility, I find myself thinking about music. There are songs from the ''60s and '70s, when I first began listening to popular music, that I love unabashedly; there are musical theater songs that I play when I want to raise my spirits. So many of these songs I love (I'm almost embarrassed to mention titles but I'll offer two: "Happy Together" by the Turtles, and "You Can't Stop the Beat" from Hairspray) are hardly Schubert or even Lennon-McCartney/Sondheim but something about them (the melodic hook, a stray lyric, the rhythmic drive) strike a chord in me. I'm so glad they exist in the world, no matter where they rank on any artistic/aesthetic scale. That's the way I feel about certain poems. I love them, and can even tell you why, but the reasons aren't those that I bring to bear when asked what makes a poem great. When I am in their presence, I feel like I suspend judgment and simply enjoy them.
Thanks for the comment. I will have to think about this a bit. In the meantime...I have a post scheduled for tomorrow that you may find interesting regarding songs and the difference between the words in poetry and songs. And also emotion.
I think it’s interesting that Mary Oliver is dismissed as being twee and sentimental, while Maggie Smith is just seen as being deep with things like her oft-shared “Good Bones”:
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
The key difference I see between Mary Oliver and Maggie Smith is that Smith is an alleged “realist,” nattering on about how terrible things are even though it is clearly empirically not true that “for every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird” or that “for every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake.” (Does Maggie Smith actually think the mortality rate for children is >50%? Do her readers?)
“Good Bones” is a parallel poem to “Summer Day,” about life being short but having “delicious” moments in it, that “could be beautiful,” with the critical difference that Smith wraps her sentiments in a particularly nasty pessimism that’s currently hip, while Oliver just focuses on the joy. If Oliver’s poems are trite, pop-pessimism like “Good Bones” is more so, without the benefit of making the reader happier. But we culturally treat poems like “Good Bones” as uncontroversially profound, because we like to pretend that cynicism is smart.
What a great observation. I think by putting these two poets and poem side by side you’ve created this deeper perception of modern poetry. For Oliver, the world is beautiful, full of hope. Her words are of encouragement because that is what we need to survive. Life will always have suffering. Smiths poem reflects the anger of our divided world. There isn’t hope because people are awful and will always be awful. That 50% badness of the world that you point out is so irrational. The poet is clearly ranting because emotion means more than fact, and this *feels* true to Smith’s reader. Poetry can’t be just about the feels. And yet… that’s seems to be where we are in this era of literature.
Thanks! I hadn’t considered polarization influencing Smith’s negativity before. I think that’s a really interesting explanation for where this “half of the world is awful” imaginary statistic comes from.
I’m all for emotion, and also all for facts. It’s really factually true that grasshoppers have intricate mandibles that pick up food and move from side to side. It’s also factually true that childhood mortality is at the lowest rate it has ever been in all of human history, and that children being murdered are incredibly rare. This is what makes Mary Oliver the better poet, in my opinion, if not the more popular one.
I wish Mary Oliver's poems gave me the same feels that it does to other readers, but to my mind her voice (especially in poems like Wild Geese) sounds like a faux-grandmother's, artificially crinkled and aged, used to sell Steen's Syrup; it feigns wisdom and offers little of substance (perhaps your point in analyzing her Crystal Lite approach to the spiritual life). In fact, I think it mocks folks who have no choice but to drag themselves through the dark night of the soul, whether because of depression, addiction, bullying, or abuse. It is easy for the cozy cat I imagine curled in her poetry to speak the things it does, I suppose, because it does feel flimsy in its experience. Of course you need to repent - ask any alcoholic who has joined AA.
No poet can speak to everyone—all is good IMO. I have been through the dark night myself, but interestingly enough so has she. It’s been touched upon in some interviews. Her roads take a different road out of hell, I suppose. But yes, her spirituality is a bit lacking for me, yet it is reflective of the times and how most people experience spirituality. My poetry is different… more informed by violence. But not sure it’s much better.
I appreciate your response (and for writing this article in the first place)! I agree, it's pretty silly to try and dictate how someone should or should not feel about a poem or poet. To each their own! I prefer the work of Henri Cole, who also writes beautifully about the natural world but rarely, if ever, in the sentimental, treacly way that is the usual Oliver mode. I think poetry which is informed by violence is bound to be fuller in its expression, at least, since violence is a very real part of our human condition. I think poetry that jacks up the emotional ante purely through sensationalist means is just as "bad" as poetry that focuses only on the "pretty" side of life, though - for me it's a fine balance.
I think Mary Oliver earns the oft-quoted question at the end of The Summer Day by the particularity of her careful and meticulous description of the grasshopper in the middle of the poem:
"the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away."
The poem begins with three questions and ends with three questions, as if it's a kind of catechism.
The first three questions echo the questions that God asks Job: who made the world?
I like that it doesn't stay at that general level but drills down to the particular, to a moment in time, an image. And that image is a sort of communion with the natural world, the grasshopper eating out of her hand, it's a kind of Eucharistic image.
But Oliver follows that image not with answers but with uncertainty, "I don't know exactly what a prayer is." As a person of faith, it seems to me that if she could answer her first three questions she might come closer to knowing what prayer is. But she shies away from that encounter. She turns away from seeking God the maker to enjoy the beauties of the created world. Which are truly lovely. There is something of a sabbath mood of the image of her being idle and blessed and strolling through the fields and paying close attention to grasshoppers, just as in other poems she's paid attention to swans and black bears, as she alludes to in her other opening questions.
So yes on one level she earns those three final rhetorical questions, which suggest a sort of Thoreau-ian call to seize the day.
And yet... indeed this spirituality falls short for me. Communion with nature is a necessary and natural first step, but she doesn't seem to go beyond her questions to actually trying to nail down an answer. She doesn't offer praise to the one who made the grasshopper, except, perhaps by implication. Is asking "who made thee?" in echo of Blake enough to constitute a sort of prayer? I might be tempted to think of it as a kind of prayer if the speaker hadn't undercut that motion by disavowing a knowledge of what prayer is. Unlike Blake, Oliver doesn't offer an answer. Blake tells us that the one who made the lamb was himself called a Lamb. Blake offers explicit blessing in his twice repeated line of the final couplet: Little 'Lamb, God bless thee.'
I contrast Oliver's grasshopper, too, to Hopkins Windhover, another faithfully observed poem wondering at a creature of the natural world. Yet Hopkins makes the praise explicit in his poem with the dedication "to Christ our Lord".
So for me as a reader, Oliver's questions at the end of Summer Day stir me as good carpe diem poems should do.
"Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"
But this little catechism at the end also leaves me a bit sad that she doesn't press into the first three questions more. The second set of questions wants to be exhilarating, and does exhilarate with a call to live, to enjoy the sabbath joy of communion with nature in the fields. But at the same time they imply that one doesn't have to answer her first set of questions, one doesn't have to praise the Maker. It is enough to simply pay attention, to kneel in the grass not to pray but to observe nature. It is enough to be idle and feel oneself to be blessed, she implies. But I don't agree. If everything dies and death is universal then life is too short not to make lazy jabs at God without holding harder to the quest for answers. If everything dies then it's not enough to spend my wild and precious life merely observing and wondering, I think a poet needs to do more. There is the work of praise. Granted, this is more of a theological argument than a poetic one. But it's why I find Oliver's spirituality a little flat. It's a bit too much moral therapeutic deism for me.
Thank you for also seeing the similarity between the first lines of Summer Day and chapters 38-41 of Job. Also thank you for helping me see the parallel to communion in the feeding of the grasshopper. Mary Oliver poems remind me of the prose of Annie Dillard, especially in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I would be interested to know your thoughts on Annie Dillard, if you’re familiar with her.
This is probably me overthinking things and being way too deconstruct-y, but I read “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?” as a snipe at the cynics who do think that, akin to:
“So check out this amazing grasshopper. There are untold billions of these, all as intricate and individual as this one. Like, really look at it. And today is so gorgeous. Ok, I know you’re always like “life is meaningless and everything ends in entropy and nature is the war of all against all” or whatever, but if that’s what you really think, where do you get off wasting today being miserable? Like you’re always on about, “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?” Fine. Cool. So, tell me then, what are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Anyway, that’s how I’m reading it.
Also. I cite both Summer Day and the book of Job here:
I haven't read as much Annie Dillard as I'd like. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is one of those books that's been in my To Be Read pile for years. I kept checking it out from the library, reading a bit, and then getting distracted. So then I bought a copy and have piled a dozen books on top of it. I think I might read it as a read aloud to my kids when we finish the selections from John Muir that we are currently working on. I do see a kinship between Dillard and Oliver, though, from as little as I know of the work of both, which feels like a sampling more than a deep encounter.
I really got into Pilgrim at Tinker Creek through listening to it as an audiobook, while on a road trip across Wyoming and Montana. So I think reading it aloud is a great idea.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, along with the book of Job, started my trek back to Christianity after some time in the, shall we say, wilderness of atheism. As a fellow believer and fan of Mary Oliver and Job, I felt like you’d appreciate that.
I like Mary Oliver because for me her poems are relatable on different levels. Her comment that she was trying endstops made me think of Peter or Paul of the folk group Peter, Paul, and Mary when asked about the song "Puff the Magic Dragon". As to its meaning he replied it's a fun song about a dragon. I think perhaps at times we analyze a bit too much and take away the joy of writng and reading.
Diane, I am so glad you like Oliver. After writing this and posting in other places it has come out that there are people who really do not like her at all for strict formalist reasons. I think there has to be a compromise or an understanding of what art is and does. What is the end goal of poetry and what form should it take to get to that place? Some people drill into people the idea of meter, meter, meter... that is the minimum. These debates make be very sad.
Someone gifted me "Devotions" some years ago and it gave me a great deal of confidence and comfort to read poetry that I "understood" without twisting myself in knots, and that my narrative and straight-forward poetry might not all be total trash. To learn she is controversial is surprising to me since I know her as much beloved, but I do believe you obviously and don't disagree wholeheartedly with her detractors. I feel a little insecure now—I used to say she was one of my favorites and felt that was a "legitimate" answer as I try to become familiar with more poets and now maybe I'll be written off!
That being said, I'm reading her handbook now and am finding it very helpful. :)
You can say she is one of your favorites is she is. I posted this Substack on X and FB and got a bit of blowback so I ended up having to defend Oliver’s work as poetry. But I am glad it happened. I learned about the person (a greatly admired formalist poet) and I learned how to defend my statements. And yes, it turns out that I do believe Mary Oliver wrote poems.
As for your poems and my poems… they may be trash. We can be honest, but to write is a joy and get better by writing more. So please keep writing poetry. Keep reading it. Find out what tools work for you. My only advice is to learn form—scansion of a poem. It really does help.
Have you read Sara Teasdale? I think you may like her, and saying you like her probably won’t raise eyebrows amongst “poets.” Another one you may like is Richard Wilbur. Try searching for “The Writer” a
Bd “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World.” He is also a great translator of poetry. Search for his translation of Anna Akhmatova’s “Lot’s Wife”—and Akhmatova is great as well. One of the greatest Russian poets.
In Mary Oliver's introduction to her poetry handbook she gives this wise advice: "A poet's interest in craft never fades, of course. This book is not meant to be a good beginning. Many instructors, for whatever reasons, feel their 'professional' criticism (i.e., opinion) of a student's work is what is called for. This book is written in cheerful disagreement with that feeling. It is written to empower the beginning writer who stands between two marvelous complex things—an experience (or an idea or a feeling), and the urge to tell about it in the best possible conjunction of words."
I love Mary Oliver. I wouldn't say that every one of her poems grabs my attention, but enough of them have made me sit there and think about what they were trying to say long after I had read them. That is my measuring stick.
I confess that I am not as familiar with contemporary poetry as I would like to be, but even I kept coming across references to Mary Oliver. I read her collection A Thousand Mornings a couple of years ago and was surprised that I didn’t love her. I love her way of engaging with and describing the natural world, but I did leave that collection wanting there to be a little “more” there. But not all poets are for everyone, and I am not going to be a gatekeeper when it comes to deciding who is and isn’t truly a “good” poet (mainly because I change my mind a lot, ha). I do not like snobbishness around writing.
This is a really interesting conversation because of the rising popularity of what is known as “Instagram poetry” (a term I think is meant as an insult but which I use as merely descriptive). Is poetry that appeals to the masses really good poetry? Is poetry that has a fairly evident meaning good poetry? I don’t really know, but I think poetry that inspires people to want to read more poetry is a good thing, and Oliver has done that for me.
Jane Kenyon… God does not leave us comfortless! Gah. She was a wonder. I don’t like snobbishness in writing either. It speaks of elitism and gatekeeping. I try to read and listen to different voices. I would say that the collection to get of Oliver’s is *Devotions* which is fairly comprehensive. It will have her best and some of her earliest. You get a wide view of the evolution of her voice, where she shines and where she never quite gets out of the fog. Still… better than much of what is out there.
At this point in my reading life, her poetry doesn't appeal to me. But that's probably because I don't read a lot of poetry. And the poems I do love are those I first learned in high school. So there's a lot of room for my evolution as a reader of poetry!
Thanks for the comment, David. It is interesting that you mention where you are in your life as a reason why Oliver doesn’t resonate. I think certain writers and works get to our hearts at just the right time. For me and books, I think of East of Eden and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. For poets, Jane Kenyon and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Mary Oliver is up there, too. I think when we are teens or young adults, that’s when an author can affect us the most because we are starting to form who we are as a person.
Great essays by smart people. You may want to browse. Jody and Sally are quite faithful to publishing a poem and essay Monday to Friday. Every one of the entries has been excellent.
I've never read Oliver's poems. Interesting she's this divisive. I think it's great to end poems with questions though. It's a bit direct, true. But the reader feels engaged.
Hi Felix, I think you should take a look at the poems in that one post I link to re: is Mary Oliver a good poet? Those poems, and I think the prose ones he highlights, are quite excellent. Of course, if it isn’t your thing it is fine. But as I mentioned, she is part of the modern poetic zeitgeist and to know 21st century one must know her. And her approach to God and faith IS reflective of how many Americans now define their spirituality.
I wonder who gets to decide what amount of emotion is appropriate under which circumstances. I am probably one of the first to shrug at poetry I think of as "precious", but also believe anything that employs metaphors is necessarily subjective and cannot be quantified as "correct". I find discussion fascinating, absolutes absurd. (Yeah, I see the paradox there.)
I have read a lot of very emotional poetry. There are some Jane Kenyon poems that still make we weep. Same with Anna Akhmatova. I think it has to do with style, and Myers contention I think is more of a spiritual one. But it is related to that sense that Oliver IS too precious when it comes to blackberries, bears, and bodies of water. That she attributes too much meaning to these things—falling short, not just of a Christian divine, but another level of sublimity. Anyway, are there poems that you love in particular, Ren? I’d love to know. I am always interested in what people love. ❤️ Z
I think that Oliver is often too pretty and skirts around things like abuse and illness - so not too emotional - on the contrary really - evasive. Maybe that is a form of being precious? Of not actually delving into the divine because one isn't actually exploring why the divine is necessary? I'm not sure that I have a poem or poems that I love in general. I think they speak to be differently each time I approach them. I can say that the last contemporary book that floored me was Jen Campbell's The Girl Aquarium. It reminded me how surreal our lives are. I read it before I knew a thing about the author and am grateful for that. I wish I could share a photo in a comment. Not the poem I wanted to share, but: https://www.jen-campbell.co.uk/samplepoems.html
The response I got showed me she was admired by many people who clearly read a lot of the poetry I liked. So I started reading her poetry and I have found many lovely poems by her, especially in her collection, Dream Work. I'm really glad I found her work.
Oh, I remember that post! I think I commented on it as well. I am so glad you found her. My most recent interaction with a person IRL regarding Mary Oliver was not so glowing and I had him in mind when I was writing. But yes, plenty of people who know something about poetry love her, including myself.
I haven't come across much of Mary Oliver's poetry, but when I saw this I strongly disagreed, and I didn't look for more:
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.
In the links you posted and at Poetry I found some of her poems that I think are excellent. You don't win a Pulitzer prize if you are merely sentimental. Maybe it's just her spirituality that's soft.
I think her spirituality is soft but reflective of the times we live in. If people 50 years from now want to get an idea of what our modern era states as “spiritual but not religious” well, look no farther than Mary Oliver. However, her poetry is very good. If it weren’t so many people would not remember it and think it beautiful.
Thinking about poetry, affection, and accessibility, I find myself thinking about music. There are songs from the ''60s and '70s, when I first began listening to popular music, that I love unabashedly; there are musical theater songs that I play when I want to raise my spirits. So many of these songs I love (I'm almost embarrassed to mention titles but I'll offer two: "Happy Together" by the Turtles, and "You Can't Stop the Beat" from Hairspray) are hardly Schubert or even Lennon-McCartney/Sondheim but something about them (the melodic hook, a stray lyric, the rhythmic drive) strike a chord in me. I'm so glad they exist in the world, no matter where they rank on any artistic/aesthetic scale. That's the way I feel about certain poems. I love them, and can even tell you why, but the reasons aren't those that I bring to bear when asked what makes a poem great. When I am in their presence, I feel like I suspend judgment and simply enjoy them.
Thanks for the comment. I will have to think about this a bit. In the meantime...I have a post scheduled for tomorrow that you may find interesting regarding songs and the difference between the words in poetry and songs. And also emotion.
I think it’s interesting that Mary Oliver is dismissed as being twee and sentimental, while Maggie Smith is just seen as being deep with things like her oft-shared “Good Bones”:
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
The key difference I see between Mary Oliver and Maggie Smith is that Smith is an alleged “realist,” nattering on about how terrible things are even though it is clearly empirically not true that “for every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird” or that “for every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake.” (Does Maggie Smith actually think the mortality rate for children is >50%? Do her readers?)
“Good Bones” is a parallel poem to “Summer Day,” about life being short but having “delicious” moments in it, that “could be beautiful,” with the critical difference that Smith wraps her sentiments in a particularly nasty pessimism that’s currently hip, while Oliver just focuses on the joy. If Oliver’s poems are trite, pop-pessimism like “Good Bones” is more so, without the benefit of making the reader happier. But we culturally treat poems like “Good Bones” as uncontroversially profound, because we like to pretend that cynicism is smart.
What a great observation. I think by putting these two poets and poem side by side you’ve created this deeper perception of modern poetry. For Oliver, the world is beautiful, full of hope. Her words are of encouragement because that is what we need to survive. Life will always have suffering. Smiths poem reflects the anger of our divided world. There isn’t hope because people are awful and will always be awful. That 50% badness of the world that you point out is so irrational. The poet is clearly ranting because emotion means more than fact, and this *feels* true to Smith’s reader. Poetry can’t be just about the feels. And yet… that’s seems to be where we are in this era of literature.
Thanks! I hadn’t considered polarization influencing Smith’s negativity before. I think that’s a really interesting explanation for where this “half of the world is awful” imaginary statistic comes from.
I’m all for emotion, and also all for facts. It’s really factually true that grasshoppers have intricate mandibles that pick up food and move from side to side. It’s also factually true that childhood mortality is at the lowest rate it has ever been in all of human history, and that children being murdered are incredibly rare. This is what makes Mary Oliver the better poet, in my opinion, if not the more popular one.
I wish Mary Oliver's poems gave me the same feels that it does to other readers, but to my mind her voice (especially in poems like Wild Geese) sounds like a faux-grandmother's, artificially crinkled and aged, used to sell Steen's Syrup; it feigns wisdom and offers little of substance (perhaps your point in analyzing her Crystal Lite approach to the spiritual life). In fact, I think it mocks folks who have no choice but to drag themselves through the dark night of the soul, whether because of depression, addiction, bullying, or abuse. It is easy for the cozy cat I imagine curled in her poetry to speak the things it does, I suppose, because it does feel flimsy in its experience. Of course you need to repent - ask any alcoholic who has joined AA.
No poet can speak to everyone—all is good IMO. I have been through the dark night myself, but interestingly enough so has she. It’s been touched upon in some interviews. Her roads take a different road out of hell, I suppose. But yes, her spirituality is a bit lacking for me, yet it is reflective of the times and how most people experience spirituality. My poetry is different… more informed by violence. But not sure it’s much better.
I appreciate your response (and for writing this article in the first place)! I agree, it's pretty silly to try and dictate how someone should or should not feel about a poem or poet. To each their own! I prefer the work of Henri Cole, who also writes beautifully about the natural world but rarely, if ever, in the sentimental, treacly way that is the usual Oliver mode. I think poetry which is informed by violence is bound to be fuller in its expression, at least, since violence is a very real part of our human condition. I think poetry that jacks up the emotional ante purely through sensationalist means is just as "bad" as poetry that focuses only on the "pretty" side of life, though - for me it's a fine balance.
I think Mary Oliver earns the oft-quoted question at the end of The Summer Day by the particularity of her careful and meticulous description of the grasshopper in the middle of the poem:
"the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away."
The poem begins with three questions and ends with three questions, as if it's a kind of catechism.
The first three questions echo the questions that God asks Job: who made the world?
I like that it doesn't stay at that general level but drills down to the particular, to a moment in time, an image. And that image is a sort of communion with the natural world, the grasshopper eating out of her hand, it's a kind of Eucharistic image.
But Oliver follows that image not with answers but with uncertainty, "I don't know exactly what a prayer is." As a person of faith, it seems to me that if she could answer her first three questions she might come closer to knowing what prayer is. But she shies away from that encounter. She turns away from seeking God the maker to enjoy the beauties of the created world. Which are truly lovely. There is something of a sabbath mood of the image of her being idle and blessed and strolling through the fields and paying close attention to grasshoppers, just as in other poems she's paid attention to swans and black bears, as she alludes to in her other opening questions.
So yes on one level she earns those three final rhetorical questions, which suggest a sort of Thoreau-ian call to seize the day.
And yet... indeed this spirituality falls short for me. Communion with nature is a necessary and natural first step, but she doesn't seem to go beyond her questions to actually trying to nail down an answer. She doesn't offer praise to the one who made the grasshopper, except, perhaps by implication. Is asking "who made thee?" in echo of Blake enough to constitute a sort of prayer? I might be tempted to think of it as a kind of prayer if the speaker hadn't undercut that motion by disavowing a knowledge of what prayer is. Unlike Blake, Oliver doesn't offer an answer. Blake tells us that the one who made the lamb was himself called a Lamb. Blake offers explicit blessing in his twice repeated line of the final couplet: Little 'Lamb, God bless thee.'
I contrast Oliver's grasshopper, too, to Hopkins Windhover, another faithfully observed poem wondering at a creature of the natural world. Yet Hopkins makes the praise explicit in his poem with the dedication "to Christ our Lord".
So for me as a reader, Oliver's questions at the end of Summer Day stir me as good carpe diem poems should do.
"Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"
But this little catechism at the end also leaves me a bit sad that she doesn't press into the first three questions more. The second set of questions wants to be exhilarating, and does exhilarate with a call to live, to enjoy the sabbath joy of communion with nature in the fields. But at the same time they imply that one doesn't have to answer her first set of questions, one doesn't have to praise the Maker. It is enough to simply pay attention, to kneel in the grass not to pray but to observe nature. It is enough to be idle and feel oneself to be blessed, she implies. But I don't agree. If everything dies and death is universal then life is too short not to make lazy jabs at God without holding harder to the quest for answers. If everything dies then it's not enough to spend my wild and precious life merely observing and wondering, I think a poet needs to do more. There is the work of praise. Granted, this is more of a theological argument than a poetic one. But it's why I find Oliver's spirituality a little flat. It's a bit too much moral therapeutic deism for me.
Thank you for also seeing the similarity between the first lines of Summer Day and chapters 38-41 of Job. Also thank you for helping me see the parallel to communion in the feeding of the grasshopper. Mary Oliver poems remind me of the prose of Annie Dillard, especially in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I would be interested to know your thoughts on Annie Dillard, if you’re familiar with her.
This is probably me overthinking things and being way too deconstruct-y, but I read “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?” as a snipe at the cynics who do think that, akin to:
“So check out this amazing grasshopper. There are untold billions of these, all as intricate and individual as this one. Like, really look at it. And today is so gorgeous. Ok, I know you’re always like “life is meaningless and everything ends in entropy and nature is the war of all against all” or whatever, but if that’s what you really think, where do you get off wasting today being miserable? Like you’re always on about, “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?” Fine. Cool. So, tell me then, what are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Anyway, that’s how I’m reading it.
Also. I cite both Summer Day and the book of Job here:
https://doctrixperiwinkle.substack.com/p/friends-like-these
I haven't read as much Annie Dillard as I'd like. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is one of those books that's been in my To Be Read pile for years. I kept checking it out from the library, reading a bit, and then getting distracted. So then I bought a copy and have piled a dozen books on top of it. I think I might read it as a read aloud to my kids when we finish the selections from John Muir that we are currently working on. I do see a kinship between Dillard and Oliver, though, from as little as I know of the work of both, which feels like a sampling more than a deep encounter.
I really got into Pilgrim at Tinker Creek through listening to it as an audiobook, while on a road trip across Wyoming and Montana. So I think reading it aloud is a great idea.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, along with the book of Job, started my trek back to Christianity after some time in the, shall we say, wilderness of atheism. As a fellow believer and fan of Mary Oliver and Job, I felt like you’d appreciate that.
I need to read or listen to Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. It’s been mentioned recently by three Substacker I follow already.
I like Mary Oliver because for me her poems are relatable on different levels. Her comment that she was trying endstops made me think of Peter or Paul of the folk group Peter, Paul, and Mary when asked about the song "Puff the Magic Dragon". As to its meaning he replied it's a fun song about a dragon. I think perhaps at times we analyze a bit too much and take away the joy of writng and reading.
Diane, I am so glad you like Oliver. After writing this and posting in other places it has come out that there are people who really do not like her at all for strict formalist reasons. I think there has to be a compromise or an understanding of what art is and does. What is the end goal of poetry and what form should it take to get to that place? Some people drill into people the idea of meter, meter, meter... that is the minimum. These debates make be very sad.
Someone gifted me "Devotions" some years ago and it gave me a great deal of confidence and comfort to read poetry that I "understood" without twisting myself in knots, and that my narrative and straight-forward poetry might not all be total trash. To learn she is controversial is surprising to me since I know her as much beloved, but I do believe you obviously and don't disagree wholeheartedly with her detractors. I feel a little insecure now—I used to say she was one of my favorites and felt that was a "legitimate" answer as I try to become familiar with more poets and now maybe I'll be written off!
That being said, I'm reading her handbook now and am finding it very helpful. :)
You can say she is one of your favorites is she is. I posted this Substack on X and FB and got a bit of blowback so I ended up having to defend Oliver’s work as poetry. But I am glad it happened. I learned about the person (a greatly admired formalist poet) and I learned how to defend my statements. And yes, it turns out that I do believe Mary Oliver wrote poems.
As for your poems and my poems… they may be trash. We can be honest, but to write is a joy and get better by writing more. So please keep writing poetry. Keep reading it. Find out what tools work for you. My only advice is to learn form—scansion of a poem. It really does help.
Have you read Sara Teasdale? I think you may like her, and saying you like her probably won’t raise eyebrows amongst “poets.” Another one you may like is Richard Wilbur. Try searching for “The Writer” a
Bd “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World.” He is also a great translator of poetry. Search for his translation of Anna Akhmatova’s “Lot’s Wife”—and Akhmatova is great as well. One of the greatest Russian poets.
In Mary Oliver's introduction to her poetry handbook she gives this wise advice: "A poet's interest in craft never fades, of course. This book is not meant to be a good beginning. Many instructors, for whatever reasons, feel their 'professional' criticism (i.e., opinion) of a student's work is what is called for. This book is written in cheerful disagreement with that feeling. It is written to empower the beginning writer who stands between two marvelous complex things—an experience (or an idea or a feeling), and the urge to tell about it in the best possible conjunction of words."
I love Mary Oliver. I wouldn't say that every one of her poems grabs my attention, but enough of them have made me sit there and think about what they were trying to say long after I had read them. That is my measuring stick.
I confess that I am not as familiar with contemporary poetry as I would like to be, but even I kept coming across references to Mary Oliver. I read her collection A Thousand Mornings a couple of years ago and was surprised that I didn’t love her. I love her way of engaging with and describing the natural world, but I did leave that collection wanting there to be a little “more” there. But not all poets are for everyone, and I am not going to be a gatekeeper when it comes to deciding who is and isn’t truly a “good” poet (mainly because I change my mind a lot, ha). I do not like snobbishness around writing.
This is a really interesting conversation because of the rising popularity of what is known as “Instagram poetry” (a term I think is meant as an insult but which I use as merely descriptive). Is poetry that appeals to the masses really good poetry? Is poetry that has a fairly evident meaning good poetry? I don’t really know, but I think poetry that inspires people to want to read more poetry is a good thing, and Oliver has done that for me.
(Also, Jane Kenyon has also made me weep!)
Jane Kenyon… God does not leave us comfortless! Gah. She was a wonder. I don’t like snobbishness in writing either. It speaks of elitism and gatekeeping. I try to read and listen to different voices. I would say that the collection to get of Oliver’s is *Devotions* which is fairly comprehensive. It will have her best and some of her earliest. You get a wide view of the evolution of her voice, where she shines and where she never quite gets out of the fog. Still… better than much of what is out there.
At this point in my reading life, her poetry doesn't appeal to me. But that's probably because I don't read a lot of poetry. And the poems I do love are those I first learned in high school. So there's a lot of room for my evolution as a reader of poetry!
Thanks for the comment, David. It is interesting that you mention where you are in your life as a reason why Oliver doesn’t resonate. I think certain writers and works get to our hearts at just the right time. For me and books, I think of East of Eden and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. For poets, Jane Kenyon and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Mary Oliver is up there, too. I think when we are teens or young adults, that’s when an author can affect us the most because we are starting to form who we are as a person.
I think I may have a Substack you may like for poetry… https://poemsancientandmodern.substack.com/
Great essays by smart people. You may want to browse. Jody and Sally are quite faithful to publishing a poem and essay Monday to Friday. Every one of the entries has been excellent.
Thanks Zina.
I subscribed. This looks perfect for someone like me still in the adolescence of my poetry appreciation. Really appreciate the suggestion.
I've never read Oliver's poems. Interesting she's this divisive. I think it's great to end poems with questions though. It's a bit direct, true. But the reader feels engaged.
BTW yes! To ending poems with questions. Or images without explaining them. Those are my favorite. ❤️ Z
Hi Felix, I think you should take a look at the poems in that one post I link to re: is Mary Oliver a good poet? Those poems, and I think the prose ones he highlights, are quite excellent. Of course, if it isn’t your thing it is fine. But as I mentioned, she is part of the modern poetic zeitgeist and to know 21st century one must know her. And her approach to God and faith IS reflective of how many Americans now define their spirituality.
I wonder who gets to decide what amount of emotion is appropriate under which circumstances. I am probably one of the first to shrug at poetry I think of as "precious", but also believe anything that employs metaphors is necessarily subjective and cannot be quantified as "correct". I find discussion fascinating, absolutes absurd. (Yeah, I see the paradox there.)
I have read a lot of very emotional poetry. There are some Jane Kenyon poems that still make we weep. Same with Anna Akhmatova. I think it has to do with style, and Myers contention I think is more of a spiritual one. But it is related to that sense that Oliver IS too precious when it comes to blackberries, bears, and bodies of water. That she attributes too much meaning to these things—falling short, not just of a Christian divine, but another level of sublimity. Anyway, are there poems that you love in particular, Ren? I’d love to know. I am always interested in what people love. ❤️ Z
I think that Oliver is often too pretty and skirts around things like abuse and illness - so not too emotional - on the contrary really - evasive. Maybe that is a form of being precious? Of not actually delving into the divine because one isn't actually exploring why the divine is necessary? I'm not sure that I have a poem or poems that I love in general. I think they speak to be differently each time I approach them. I can say that the last contemporary book that floored me was Jen Campbell's The Girl Aquarium. It reminded me how surreal our lives are. I read it before I knew a thing about the author and am grateful for that. I wish I could share a photo in a comment. Not the poem I wanted to share, but: https://www.jen-campbell.co.uk/samplepoems.html
When I came across Mary Oliver on Substack (I hadn't read her before), I was initially curious as to why she was quoted so often and so obviously revered by many readers. I wrote about this: https://open.substack.com/pub/jeffstreeter/p/whos-mary-oliver?r=1h6yf6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
The response I got showed me she was admired by many people who clearly read a lot of the poetry I liked. So I started reading her poetry and I have found many lovely poems by her, especially in her collection, Dream Work. I'm really glad I found her work.
Oh, I remember that post! I think I commented on it as well. I am so glad you found her. My most recent interaction with a person IRL regarding Mary Oliver was not so glowing and I had him in mind when I was writing. But yes, plenty of people who know something about poetry love her, including myself.
I haven't come across much of Mary Oliver's poetry, but when I saw this I strongly disagreed, and I didn't look for more:
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.
In the links you posted and at Poetry I found some of her poems that I think are excellent. You don't win a Pulitzer prize if you are merely sentimental. Maybe it's just her spirituality that's soft.
I think her spirituality is soft but reflective of the times we live in. If people 50 years from now want to get an idea of what our modern era states as “spiritual but not religious” well, look no farther than Mary Oliver. However, her poetry is very good. If it weren’t so many people would not remember it and think it beautiful.