Mary Oliver: favorite poem that is NOT "Wild Geese"
June 26, 2019 8:41 AM   Subscribe

What is your favorite Mary Oliver poem that is not "Wild Geese"?

I want to find more of Mary Oliver's gems. Please tell me your favorite of her poems, other than Wild Geese. Thanks.

Not that Wild Geese isn't a great poem. I just want to hear what else you like.

You don't have to tell my why you like a particular poem, but you certainly can if you want.
posted by Orlop to Writing & Language (27 answers total) 47 users marked this as a favorite
 


The Kingfisher

The kingfisher rises out of the black wave
Like a blue flower, in his beak
he carries a silver leaf. I think this is
The prettiest world— so long as you don’t mind
a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life
that doesn’t have its splash of happiness?
There are more fish than there are leaves
on a thousand trees, and anyway the kingfisher
wasn’t born to think about it, or anything else.
When the wave snaps shut over his blue head, the water
remains water— hunger is the only story
he has ever heard in his life that he could believe.
I don’t say that he’s right. Neither
do I say he’s wrong. Religiously he swallows the silver leaf
with its broken red river, and with a rough and easy cry
I couldn’t rouse out of my thoughtful body
if my life depended on it, he swings back
over the bright sea to do the same thing, to do it
(as I long to do something, anything) perfectly.
posted by dywypi at 8:45 AM on June 26, 2019 [2 favorites]


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.
posted by CMcG at 8:47 AM on June 26, 2019 [17 favorites]


"The Poet Goes to Indiana", just for the moment with the new horse.
posted by JohnFromGR at 8:49 AM on June 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


Sleeping in the Forest.
posted by jessamyn at 8:55 AM on June 26, 2019


When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

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.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 9:11 AM on June 26, 2019 [17 favorites]




The Fish

The first fish
I ever caught
would not lie down
quiet in the pail
but flailed and sucked
at the burning
amazement of the air
and died
in the slow pouring off
of rainbows. Later
I opened his body and separated
the flesh from the bones
and ate him. Now the sea
is in me: I am the fish, the fish
glitters in me; we are
risen, tangled together, certain to fall
back to the sea. Out of pain,
and pain, and more pain
we feed this feverish plot, we are nourished
by the mystery.
posted by darchildre at 9:51 AM on June 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: This is great. Only one of these poems was familiar to me. This is very helpful.
posted by Orlop at 9:53 AM on June 26, 2019


In Blackwater Woods


Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.
posted by spindrifter at 9:59 AM on June 26, 2019 [5 favorites]


"The Uses of Sorrow"

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
posted by carrioncomfort at 10:02 AM on June 26, 2019 [12 favorites]


Breakage

I go down to the edge of the sea.
How everything shines in the morning light!
The cusp of the whelk,
the broken cupboard of the clam,
the opened, blue mussels,
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—
and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone.
It's like a schoolhouse
of little words,
thousands of words.
First you figure out what each one means by itself,
the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop
full of moonlight.

Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:02 AM on June 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


I'm so pleased that no one has yet posted the one that my username comes from!

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it.
There are plenty of lives and
whole towns destroyed or about to be.
We are not wise, and not very often kind.
And much can never be redeemed.
Still life has some possibility left.
Perhaps this is its way of fighting back,
that sometimes something happened better
than all the riches or power in the world.
It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it
in the instant when love begins.
Anyway, that’s often the case.
Anyway, whatever it is,
don’t be afraid of its plenty.
Joy is not made to be a crumb.
-Mary Oliver
posted by possibilityleft at 10:23 AM on June 26, 2019 [8 favorites]


Lines written in the days of growing darkness

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends

into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don't say
it's easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?

So let us go on, cheerfully enough,
this and every crisping day,

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.
**
I hate autumn with the shorter days and the dying things. This poem has helped me reshape my attitude toward it.
posted by kimberussell at 10:26 AM on June 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac

.....

I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.

so why not get started immediately.

I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.

And to write music or poems about.

posted by Stacey at 10:32 AM on June 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


here are two because I can't choose one:

Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.


Look and See


This morning, at waterside, a sparrow flew
to a water rock and landed, by error, on the back
of an eider duck; lightly it fluttered off, amused.
The duck, too, was not provoked, but, you might say, was
laughing.

This afternoon a gull sailing over
our house was casually scratching
its stomach of white feathers with one
pink foot as it flew.

Oh Lord, how shining and festive is your gift to us, if we
only look, and see.
posted by karayel at 10:34 AM on June 26, 2019 [3 favorites]


I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life

Love, love, love, says Percy.
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.

Then, go to sleep.
Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
Then, trust.

****
(Percy was her dog)
posted by charmedimsure at 10:34 AM on June 26, 2019 [9 favorites]


Every single poem in her book American Primitive.
posted by LaBellaStella at 11:20 AM on June 26, 2019


As an aside, since "The Uses of Sorrow" has been mentioned, here is an article from last year that muses on the theme of the poem. It's stuck with me throughout this painful year, and is a good read if that poem resonates with you.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 1:37 PM on June 26, 2019 [2 favorites]


These two.

Walking to Oak-Head Pond, and Thinking of
the Ponds I Will Visit in the Next Days and Weeks

What is so utterly invisible
as tomorrow?
Not love,
not the wind,
not the inside of a stone.
Not anything.
And yet, how often I'm fooled -
I'm wading along
in the sunlight -
and I'm sure I can see the fields and the ponds shining
days ahead -
I can see the light spilling
like a shower of meteors
into next week's trees,
and I plan to be there soon -
and, so far, I am
just that lucky,
my legs splashing
over the edge of darkness,
my heart on fire.
I don't know where
such certainty comes from -
the brave flesh
or the theater of the mind -
but if I had to guess
I would say that only
what the soul is supposed to be
could send us forth
with such cheer
as even the leaf must wear
as it unfurls
its fragrant body, and shines
against the hard possibility of stoppage -
which, day after day,
before such brisk, corpuscular belief,
shudders, and gives way.

and

Dampness, Moss, Stone

Like the dampness
of faith
comes Spring;

every depression—
last year's leaves packed down
into it—

is full now
of clear water,
the ripples

are multiplying,
the frogs
are gathering,

they are crying out,
and the moon
has come back

over the hills,
and everywhere you look
there are the heaviest stones

in unexpected places,
in fields,
against hillsides,

luminous in the moonlight,
moss and dampness, as of darkness,
still clinging,

as though they are messages,
as though they have just
been rolled away.
posted by mmw at 2:59 PM on June 26, 2019 [2 favorites]


The Black Snake

When the black snake
flashed onto the morning road,
and the truck could not swerve--
death, that is how it happens.

Now he lies looped and useless
as an old bicycle tire.
I stop the car
and carry him into the bushes.

He is as cool and gleaming
as a braided whip, he is as beautiful and quiet
as a dead brother.
I leave him under the leaves

and drive on, thinking
about death: its suddenness,
its terrible weight,
its certain coming. Yet under

reason burns a brighter fire, which the bones
have always preferred.
It is the story of endless good fortune.
It says to oblivion: not me!

It is the light at the center of every cell.
It is what sent the snake coiling and flowing forward
happily all spring through the green leaves before
he came to the road.
posted by selfmedicating at 7:03 PM on June 26, 2019


“I Worried”
posted by ChristineSings at 7:38 PM on June 26, 2019


I love so many of her poems in Felicity, but this one especially:

NOT ANYONE WHO SAYS

Not anyone who says, “I’m going to be
careful and smart in matters of love,”
who says, “I’m going to choose slowly,”
but only those lovers who didn’t choose at all
but were, as it were, chosen
by something invisible and powerful and uncontrollable
and beautiful and possibly even
unsuitable —
only those know what I’m talking about
in this talking about love.

And if you haven't discovered it yet, her interview on On Being is a real treat.
posted by momochan at 9:10 PM on June 26, 2019


FWIW, I found many new-to-me Mary Oliver poems in her obituary thread here.

{The Journey is deeply, critically, massively important to me, and I'm glad someone else posted it already.}
posted by epersonae at 1:10 PM on June 27, 2019


The Violets

Down by the rumbling creek and the tall trees—
     where I went truant from school three days a week
          and therefore broke the record—
there were violets as easy in their lives
     as anything you have ever seen
          or leaned down to intake the sweet breath of.
Later, when the necessary houses were built
     they were gone, and who would give significance
          to their absence.
Oh violets, you did signify, and what shall take
     your place?
posted by aught at 1:17 PM on June 27, 2019 [1 favorite]


1.
I know a lot of fancy words.
I tear them from my heart and my tongue.
Then I pray.

2.
Lord God, mercy is in your hands, pour
me a little. And tenderness too. My
need is great. Beauty walks so freely
and with such gentleness. Impatience puts
a halter on my face and I run away over
the green fields wanting your voice, your
tenderness, but having to do with only
the sweet grasses of the fields against
my body. When I first found you I was
filled with light, now the darkness grows
and it is filled with crooked things, bitter
and weak, each one bearing my name.

3.
I lounge on the grass, that's all. So
simple. Then I lie back until I am
inside the cloud that is just above me
but very high, and shaped like a fish.
Or, perhaps not. Then I enter the place
of not-thinking, not-remembering, not-
wanting. When the blue jay cries out his
riddle, in his carping voice, I return.
But I go back, the threshold is always
near. Over and back, over and back. Then
I rise. Maybe I rub my face as though I
have been asleep. But I have not been
asleep. I have been, as I say, inside
the cloud, or, perhaps, the lily floating
on the water. Then I go back to town,
to my own house, my own life, which has
now become brighter and simpler, some-
where I have never been before.

4.
Of course I have always known you
are present in the clouds, and the
black oak I especially adore, and the
wings of birds. But you are present
too in the body, listening to the body,
teaching it to live, instead of all
that touching, with disembodied joy.
We do not do this easily. We have
lived so long in the heavens of touch,
and we maintain our mutability, our
physicality, even as we begin to
apprehend the other world. Slowly we
make our appreciative response.
Slowly appreciation swells to
astonishment. And we enter the dialogue
of our lives that is beyond all under-
standing or conclusion. It is mystery,
It is love of God. It is obedience.

5.
Oh, feed me this day, Holy Spirit, with
the fragrance of the fields and the
freshness of the oceans which you have
made, and help me to hear and to hold
in all dearness those exacting and wonderful
words of our Lord Jesus Christ, saying:
Follow me.

6.
Every summer the lilies rise
and open their white hands until they almost
cover the black waters of the pond. And I give
thanks but it does not seem like adequate thanks,
it doesn't seem
festive enough or constant enough, nor does the
name of the Lord of the words of thanksgiving come
into it often enough. Everywhere I go I am
treated like royalty, which I am not. I thirst and
am given water. My eyes thirst and I am given
the white lilies on the black water. My heart
sings but the apparatus of singing doesn't convey
half what it feels and means. In spring there's hope,
in fall the exquisite, necessary diminishing, in
winter I am as sleepy as any beast in its
leafy cave, but in the summer there is
everywhere the luminous sprawl of gifts,
the hospitality of the Lord and my
inadequate answers as I row my beautiful, temporary body
through this water-lily world.

--Mary Oliver (1935-2019), American poet, teacher, and author, from Thirst: Poems, 2006
posted by cross_impact at 10:10 AM on June 28, 2019


Trilliums
(There is supposed to be tabbed formatting but I wasn't sure how to make it work here.)

Every spring
among
the ambiguities
of childhood

the hillsides grew white
with the wild trilliums.
I believed in the world.
Oh, I wanted

to be easy
in the peopled kingdoms,
to take my place there,
but there was none

that I could find
shaped like me.
So I entered
through the tender buds,

I crossed the cold creek,
my backbone
and my thin white shoulders
unfolding and stretching.

From the time of snow-melt,
when the creek roared
and the mud slid
and the seeds cracked,

I listened to the earth-talk,
the root-wrangle,
the arguments of energy,
the dreams lying

just under the surface,
then rising,
becoming
at the last moment

flaring and luminous --
the patient parable
of every spring and hillside
year after difficult year.


Beside the Waterfall

At dawn
the big dog--
Winston by name--
reached down

into the leaves--tulips and willows mostly--
beside the white
waterfall,
and dragged out,

into plain sight,
a fawn;
it was scarcely larger
than a rabbit

and, thankfully,
it was dead.
Winston
looked over the

delicate, spotted body and then
deftly
tackled
the beautiful flower-like head,

breaking it and
breaking it off and
swallowing it.
All the while this was happening

it was growing lighter.
When I called to him
Winston merely looked up.
Grizzled around the chin

and with kind eyes,
he, too, if you're willing
had a face
like a flower; and then the red sun

which had been raising all the while anyway,
broke
clear of the trees and dropped its wild, clawed light
over everything.
posted by cnidaria at 3:39 PM on July 22, 2019


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