Mary Oliver

My good friend, Paula Lambert texted me this morning,; ”Mary Oliver has passed”.  Immediately I felt the kind of sadness that one can only experience when hearing of the death of a hero; someone who you never knew, but who shaped you profoundly in some way that made a difference in how you experience your life. I have been following her work since 1983, keeping up with books published, life events that were part of public knowledge, and upon occasion, wandering on a Provincetown beach, wishing that by some miracle she would be out walking too.

I met Mary Oliver when I was junior at Ohio University. She was brought in by the English Department to do a reading, and at that point I had never heard of her. I noticed a flyer in the hallway of one of the buildings, decided to go. Something told me to go. The evening of the reading, I was surprised to find the auditorium filled in a hushed appreciation, and when she came out on the stage, dressed in a black turtleneck and jeans, greying hair, big glasses, I was smitten. Her resonant voice emphasized the care and thoughtfulness of the words she had written, and gently conveyed the power of her realizations. She read from 12 Moons, read from American Primitive, which won the Pulitzer the next year. My 21 year old self had not yet had an opportunity to realize just how impactful a poetry reading could be, despite my having been the poetry magazine editor at a different college the year before. Something snapped inside, spreading a  molten grace, a passion that took me by surprise. The words, the person who could bring forth such epiphany… how can this become so alive, where had I been before? After the reading there was an announcement that all were invited to a reception at an English Professor’s house, and I convinced one of my housemates to go with me. I was not finished with this…night. We walked in the cold, neither of us had a car, and it turned into a sort of pilgrimage for me. I was determined to make it there, to stand next to this woman who expressed something burning wildly within me.

When we reached the house, we politely knocked on the door, and were greeted by a student who motioned us inside, and there she was; Mary Oliver.  She looked over at my friend and I and took a couple of steps toward us, saying hello, and who are you, what do you study?  I replied that we were art students, photographers, and she went very still, and looked at me and said “ You mean you’re not English majors?” “And you came all this way?” When I confirmed this, she was delighted, just delighted, and started asking me about myself, and what I was interested in, Just Totally Engaged, until the ring of people around us grew with polite impatience. She then reached out, took my hand, and said how pleased she was to have met, thanked me for coming. 

A couple of years later I spent a Sunday afternoon sitting in my open window, reading the newly published  “Dreamwork”, which grabbed me in the same way her other work had, and I obsessively carried the book everywhere. It was as though I could not bear to be apart from it, and yet I knew there was something contained in the whole of it that I was missing. By this time I was 25, and so unhappy, that I needed to change my life. The poems gave me the courage. Ten years later, I got a job, teaching photography, at Sweet Briar College, where Mary had taught poetry for 11 years or so. I missed her by one semester. When I read  “White Pine”, I knew she had written it during her Sweet Briar tenure. I made discoveries about the campus and environs through what she had written. I stood under the Fletcher Oak, and imagined her standing there, imagined her wandering around in the exact places, then going home to write in the house that I was living next door to. I was in love, and free, living the way I had always wanted, so I decided to send her one of my photographs. She was at Bennington College at the time, and I found an address, (pre internet, by the way), and sent off my package with a note.  A couple of weeks later, there was a letter, typed, but signed in fountain pen ink. She thanked me for the image, spoke of it in “all its lush beauty”, and wished me well in my budding career. I have that letter, still. It is a prized possession. 

Some years later, I decided to take off a year from image making and attend the poetry workshop classes taught by the SBC Poet in Residence, Constance Merritt. I loved the class, spent a great deal of time on the readings, and wrote all the poetry assignments for that year, 2003/04. A time came when the class was asked to write poetry in the style of one of the writers we had studied, and, of course, I chose Mary Oliver.

                                              

                                  

                                      

A Few Things I Must Say

 

A field beyond the tree line

cradles a flock of Canada geese.

I watched them honking down the sky,

a throat of horns;

wind instruments in a V formation.

Is it instinct, or just what they

like to do?

The heads that move in one direction,

then another,

do not see me,

but they must feel me,

a pale glow of fire,

friendly, in the next field.

How is it then,

that I am separate from other light?

Happiness,

more difficult than pain,

taught me to live

an edge of paradox;

it’s brutal, slamming against

my heart,

a revelation.

And what is a paradox for,

but to teach acceptance?

The geese rise,

a voice of one

that flings the treetops against the sky,

gathering the world's beauty in

uncrafted song.

And I thought I would die then,

and come for you,

and if I did,

would you come with me?

Mary Oliver died today.

 A light has transferred itself to another realm, another space where an earth speaks in root wrangle, calling upon us to change our lives, giving us the courage to do so.

In many ways, subtle and mysterious, she saved my life. What she wrote, penetrated into the darkest points, told me that yes I could, yes.

Poetry

By

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.