30 Oct 23 EcoPoetry #2: Mary Oliver

Dominion or Co-inhabitants?

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.

Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese” opening lines. 

No shortage of poets exists* who focus on nature and humankind’s integral, inseparable place within the natural world; however, few have the delicate, yet ferocious, handle on bringing us poems that do this best. Mary Oliver is one of the very best, and her awards and her work undeniably support this assertion. But why spend time reading (or listening) to poems about the environment that we live in 24/7? 

The essence of the world around us is the same essence that permeates our lives and our being-ness. Immersing ourselves in poetic reminders of our integration with the natural world – our very interdependence with it – reminds us of who we are and the kind of ecology that we are part of. Some of our most talented poets choose the natural world as their poetic playground, their pulpits from which they not only caution us against our destruction of the sphere that supports us, but they also remind us of the incredible, living privileges we have as citizens of the natural world. 

Unfortunately, too many people stop noticing these things as they go about living their lives, mentally and emotionally separated but completely integrated into the natural world that we cannot extricate ourselves from. One poet who clarifies all this for us is Mary Oliver whose pen fills pages with poetic language that reminds us where we live and our place in this living environment.

You know the experience of encountering a place, a creature, a scene of natural beauty. We take in a quick breath, and exhale it with an “a-ha” of awe and recognition.

This isn’t the first time that the Monday Almanac posts have featured Mary Oliver who is often named as one of most beloved poets of the United States. And if there is one reason she is, it may well be her ability to bring us closer to nature, our natural inheritance, and the universe we live in.

Maxine Kumin in the Women’s Review of Books said that Mary Oliver was an “indefatigable guide to the natural world. . . . particularly to its lesser-known aspects.” But what does “lesser-known aspects” mean? One criterion could be aspects of nature that are hidden away in environments such as deep swamps and tall mountain caves. Another possibility is in the academic world where nature is often dissected and analyzed until it lies cold and quivering on the stainless-steel table. A third possible meaning of “lesser-known aspects” might be cited as the ability to conceptualize nature in a scientific sense. None of these suffice to describe Mary Oliver’s familiarity with those “lesser-known aspects.”

Oliver’s poetry concerns itself with quieter things – a vee-form flock of Canada geese overhead, the crackle of broken branches as a wary deer spots a human being, the muted buzzing of bees around their hive. Maxine Kumin also notes that Oliver “stands quite comfortably on the margins of things, on the line between earth and sky, the thin membrane that separates human from what we loosely call animal.” We humans have, in large part, imagined ourselves into the false view that we are not part of nature; in fact, that “God gave man dominion “. . . over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” (1 Verses, 21-36).

And so, like many creation stories, the separation between humanity and the natural world becomes part of humankind’s view and belief about its superiority over all other earthly forms, sentient, and non-sentient. Today, like so many “modern” beliefs,” too many people view man (non-gender specific) as entitled to the planet’s resources, to use for personal wishes and for conspicuous consumerism.

But I digress. This post is about a poet who sees and shares another view: one that opens wide the privilege of being and walking on this sacred planet. So, without delay, let’s experience a few of this poet’s astounding works.

POEMS

Five A.M. in the Pinewoods

I’d seen

their hoofprints in the deep

needles and knew

they ended the long night

 

under the pines, walking

like two mute

and beautiful women toward

the deeper woods, so I

 

got up in the dark and

went there. They came

slowly down the hill

and looked at me sitting under

 

the blue trees, shyly

they stepped

closer and stared

from under their thick lashes and even

 

nibbled some damp

tassels of weeds. This

is not a poem about a dream,

though it could be.

 

This is a poem about the world

that is ours, or could be.

Finally

one of them—I swear it!—

 

would have come to my arms.

But the other

stamped sharp hoof in the

pine needles like

 

the tap of sanity,

and they went off together through

the trees. When I woke

I was alone,

 

I was thinking:

so this is how you swim inward,

so this is how you flow outward,

so this is how you pray.

How I Go to the Woods

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single

friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and

therefore

unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the

catbirds

or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of

praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can

sit

on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,

until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost

unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love

you very much.

 

Do stones feel?

Do they love their life?

Or does their patience drown out everything else?

When I walk on the beach I gather a few

white ones, dark ones, the multiple colors.

Don’t worry, I say, I'll bring you back, and I do.

Is the tree as it rises delighted with its many

branches,

each one like a poem?

Are the clouds glad to unburden their bundles of rain?

Most of the world says no, no, it’s not possible.

I refuse to think to such a conclusion.

‘Too terrible it would be, to be wrong.

Wild Geese

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 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.

The Owl

Last night the owl bunched in the tree

outside our window.  Softly he boomed,

and then again, and again, and then was gone,

and not once did we think of the god

of plunge and blood, of iron mouths.

No, we thought, if we thought,

of anything, of the god of pleasure and good luck-

the god of a happy life.  Then we drifted away to sleep

over the fields, softly, on our own dark wings. 

Background Mary Oliver 

Mary Oliver was born in 1935 and raised in Maple Hills Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. She regularly retreated from a difficult home to the nearby woods, where she would build huts of sticks and grass and write poems. She attended both Ohio State University and Vassar College, but did not receive a degree from either institution. As a young poet, Oliver was deeply influenced by Edna St. Vincent Millay and briefly lived in Millay’s home, helping Norma Millay organize her sister’s papers. 

Oliver was notoriously reticent about her private life, but it was during this period that she met her long-time partner, Molly Malone Cook. The couple moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts, and the surrounding Cape Cod landscape has had a marked influence on Oliver’s work, and it contributed to its clarity and heartbreaking tone as she writes about the natural world

Her work received early critical attention; American Primitive (1983), her fifth book, won the Pulitzer Prize. In 1992, her New and Selected Poems won the National Book Award. The collection contains poems from eight of Oliver’s previous volumes as well as previously unpublished, newer work. It makes an excellent introduction to her opus for those who are encountering her for the first time.

Oliver lived in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Hobe Sound, Florida, until her death in early 2019. She was 83.

Exploration 1: What business does a poet have in attempting to explain the experiences of the natural world to us. Wouldn’t a scientist make a better candidate to do this? 

Exploration 2: Isn’t a “vee” of Canada geese flying overhead common enough as to not warrant our notice? What would we lose if suddenly they were gone?

Exploration 3: Describe a time when you and “nature” (as a force external to you) were at odds. What was your reaction? What did you do?

*Among the many are Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and the forerunner of them all, Walt Whitman.