Poems 2010-2015 by Mary Oliver

Source of book: I own Devotions, selected poems from Oliver’s lifetime. 

Last year, one of my splurges was to purchase this book. I don’t buy many new books, but poetry tends to be harder to find used and affordable except by lucky accident. I knew this would be the case in the wake of Oliver’s death in early 2019, as she was already popular. I do not regret this purchase at all. 

As I have been doing with much of my poetry collection, I decided to read a portion of this book, representing the five collections Oliver released in the 2010s. (The book is in reverse chronological order.) The collections are Felicity (2015), Blue Horses (2014), Dog Songs (2013), A Thousand Mornings (2012), and Swan (2010). 

Looking back at my poetry reading, there are a number of themes that stand out. First, I love poets who write about nature - and that goes all the way back to my childhood reading Emily Dickinson and Christina Rosetti and Robert Frost. Second, I definitely love female poets. In particular, I tend to be drawn toward the writings of female poets who were outside the sexual mainstream in some way. From the celibacy of Dickinson and Rosetti, to the shockingly egalitarian Anne Bradstreet, to Elizabeth Barrett Browning who defied her father’s orders, to the bisexual and gender-bending Edna St. Vincent Millay, to lesbian poets like Elizabeth Bishop and Mary Oliver. (Dickinson may also fall in this category.) At the most obvious level, women who wished to write were less likely to marry - they didn’t fit the “serve the male” paradigm of the past very well. Or the “women get the second shift” reality of today. 

Mary Oliver had a traumatic childhood, with a dysfunctional family. She experienced sexual abuse, although she did not reveal the specifics. She did say that she was able to withdraw into her inner life, nature, and poetry. I will also note that she was a band geek - I think that comes out in her delightful skill with the rhythm of language. 

In her 20s, Oliver met Molly Malone Cook, who became her partner for over 40 years until Cook’s death. 

Oliver’s poetry is unique in style. I find it to have the observational skills of Frost and Dickinson, but expressed in free verse rather than traditional forms. It is perhaps less metaphorical and more descriptive, but that is an oversimplification. More than anything, I noticed that she blurs the line between nature and the poet, between the human and the earth. And also, between the Divine and Nature. I happen to agree very much with that one. It is impossible for me not to see the hand of God in nature - we both see no antagonism between evolution and creation. She was a famous walker, spending hours daily exploring and observing nature. I see a bit of myself in that, although I am not as solitary. Her poems bring to life not just the sights, but the sounds and smells and textures. It is also striking how optimistic and graceful (in both senses) her writing is. While she notes in one poem that “Each of us wears a shadow,” she follows it with the consolation of nature in the summer. May we all find such peace in our souls. 

Here are my favorites of the ones I read:

I Wake Close to Morning

Why do people keep asking to see 

    God’s identity papers

when the darkness opening into morning

    is more than enough?

Certainly any god might turn away in disgust.

Think of Sheba approaching 

    the kingdom of Solomon.

Do you think she had to ask,

    “Is this the place?”

Or this one, on a related note:

The World I Live In

I have refused to live

locked in the orderly house of

    reasons and proofs.

The world I live in and believe in

is wider than that. And anyway,

    what’s wrong with Maybe?

You wouldn’t believe what once or 

twice I have seen. I’ll just

    tell you this:

only if there are angels in your head will you

    ever, possibly, see one. 

I love her use of “Maybe.” I think both my Fundie friends and my hard-core Atheist friends tend to obsess over certainty, which is surely a product of our post-Enlightenment times. Neither is particularly open to the ambiguity, the cracks in between the physical and spiritual world, the experience of transcendence. I’m not saying that in a pejorative way. Not everyone experiences things the same way, and we certainly use different lenses to interpret the experiences we have. I do, however, like Oliver, find God in the world around me and in my own experience. And yes, I was once locked in that orderly house of reasons and proofs, where we had to KNOW that we and we alone were right about God, and it is a stifling and cruel place to live. G. K. Chesterton was a breath of fresh air to me early on for that reason: his was a faith not of certainty and bigotry but of wonder and delight and good will toward men. It is the same with Oliver, despite the bigotry she encountered. 

Here is another one I loved. 

Whistling Swans

Do you bow your head when you pray or do you look

    up into that blue space?

Take your choice, prayers fly from all directions.

And don’t worry about what language you use,

God no doubt understands them all.

Even when the swans are flying north and making

such a ruckus of noise, God is surely listening

    and understanding. 

Rumi said, There is no proof of the soul.

But isn’t the return of spring and how it

springs up in our hearts a pretty good hint?

Yes, I know, God’s silence never breaks, but is

    that really a problem?

There are thousands of voices, after all.

And furthermore, don’t you imagine (I just suggest it)

that the swans know about as much as we do about

    the whole business?

So listen to them and watch them, singing as they fly.

Take from it what you can.

I see a number of parallels with sayings from Christ and from Ecclesiastes there.  

Switching gears a bit, here is a good one about poetry and meaning. 

That Little Beast

That pretty little beast, a poem,

    has a mind of its own.

Sometimes I want it to crave apples

    but it wants red meat.

Sometimes I want to walk peacefully

    on the shore

and it wants to take off all its clothes

    and dive in.

Sometimes I want to use small words

     and make them important

and it starts shouting the dictionary,

    the opportunities.

Sometimes I want to sum up and give thanks,

    putting things in order

and it starts dancing around the room

    on its furry legs, laughing

    and calling me outrageous.

But sometimes, when I’m thinking about you,

    and no doubt smiling,

it sits down quietly, one paw under its chin,

    and just listens. 

All of the above come from Felicity, which I found enjoyable from start to finish. As her last collection, it was written very late in life, and represents the kind of life I would love as an old man. 

Blue Horses is a bit different, in part because it references one of Franz Marc’s most famous paintings, “The Tower of Blue Horses.” Oliver imagines herself in the painting, and imagines trying to explain to the horses how their creator died in war of shrapnel to the brain. 

The Tower of Blue Horses by Franz Marc

Not all of the poems are like this, but they do tend more toward themes of death and loneliness and transience. I could quote any number of them, but I particularly loved this one:

The Vulture’s Wings

The vulture’s

wings are

black death

color but

the underwings

as sunlight

flushes into

the feathers

are bright

are swamped

with light.

Just something

explainable by

the sun’s

angle yet

I keep

looking I

keep wondering

standing so

far below

these high

floating birds

could this

as most

things do

be offering

something for

us to

think about

seriously? 

The next collection is Dog Songs, which is about, well, dogs. Oliver had a number of beloved pets throughout her lifetime, and pays tribute to some of them in this volume. I won’t quote any here (too many to quote elsewhere…), but any dog lover can see her affection and bond with her canine companions. 

The next two come from A Thousand Mornings. 

I Happened to be Standing

I don’t know where prayers go,

    or what they do.

Do cats pray, while they sleep

    half-asleep in the sun?

Does the opossum pray as it

    crosses the street?

The sunflowers? The old black oak

    growing older every year?

I know I can walk through the world,

    along the shore or under the trees,

with my mind filled with things

     of little importance, in full

self-attendance. A condition I can’t really

    call being alive.

Is a prayer a gift, or a petition,

    or does it matter?

The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way.

Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not.

While I was thinking this I happened to be standing

just outside my door, with my notebook open,

which is the way I begin every morning.

Then a wren in the privet began to sing.

He was positively drenched in enthusiasm,

I don’t know why. And yet, why not. 

I wouldn’t persuade you from whatever you believe

or whatever you don’t. That’s your business.

But I thought, of the wren’s singing, what could this be

    if it isn’t a prayer?

So I just listened, my pen in the air. 

I have always had a fraught relationship with prayer, to be honest. In the religious tradition I was raised in, the most devout, the most “godly” would spend an hour or more in prayer every day. I never could do this, in large part because I HATED going over a long list of petitions on behalf of everyone I knew. And any of the religious formulas, and there are a wide diversity, seemed to be either something quickly done, repetitive and formulaic, or more like meditation. The pressure of wanting to be a devout person didn’t help with this, nor did the fact that it seemed to come easiest to the sort of people that I didn’t really understand. Unfortunately, this, like most things religious, ended up in conflict with my mother. 

As I got older, I let go of it, and just embraced a few ritual prayers, brevity, and the idea of experiencing communion with the Divine through music and nature. So this poem makes sense for me. Much more so than “prayer time” as I learned it. 

Here is a shorter poem that also speaks to me:

Three Things to Remember

As long as you’re dancing, you can

    break the rules.

Sometimes breaking the rules is just

    extending the rules.

Sometimes there are no rules.

All of us ex-Fundies need to hear this early and often. 

I’ll end with this one, from Swans. It speaks for itself. 

On the Beach

On the beach, at dawn:

four small stones clearly

hugging each other.

How many kinds of love

might there be in the world,

and how many formations might they make

and who am I ever

to imagine I could know

such a marvelous business?

When the sun broke

it poured willingly its light

over the stones

that did not move, not at all,

just as, to its always generous term,

it shed its light on me,

my own body that loves,

equally, to hug another body.

The Collected Sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay

Source of book: I own this. 

I picked this book up used from the library - a random find that cost next to nothing. I will confess that I hadn’t read anything by Edna St. Vincent Millay since my high school days, and I didn’t remember that much about the experience. In retrospect, I think it is likely that I was given one of her “safe” poems, one that tends to get picked by literature courses, rather than her more dangerous and radical ones.

In any event, I was immediately taken by this collection - it is fantastic. It was one of the more pleasant surprises in this year’s reading. I am a great lover of sonnets anyway. The form itself speaks to me (and indeed, my pathetic attempts at poetry during high school were often in sonnet form), and hers are some of the best I have read. 

 Edna St. Vincent Millay was a fascinating character. Living and writing mostly during the first half of the 20th Century, she refused to adhere to convention. She was raised by a divorced mother, whose poverty was in contrast to her dedication to introducing her daughters to classic literature. All three daughters were infamous at school for speaking their minds. Edna herself insisted in being called by her middle name: Vincent. Her teacher refused, calling her by random female names starting with V. (The name comes from the St. Vincent hospital, where Millay’s uncle was saved from death at one point.) 

Millay was openly bisexual, documenting relationships with women from her teens. Many of her poems are about love between women, which caused some scandal during her lifetime. (Although, to be fair, times were less puritanical in the 1920s than they would become later.) Millay would eventually marry in her 30s, after a number of love affairs with both men and women, having refused multiple offers of marriage, gotten pregnant, and had an abortion. The marriage was explicitly an open relationship, with both spouses continuing to have affairs with others. Her husband (like her) was strongly feminist, and fully supported her work. In fact, he took primary responsibility for domestic duties. 

In 1936, she was flung from an automobile in a freak accident, and suffered significant nerve and spinal damage. In constant pain for the rest of her life, she became addicted to morphine and alcohol, which contributed to her death at age 58. 

Even more tragic than that, however, was the tale of her career. She had previously been opposed to war, but, seeing the dangers of Fascism long before most of her fellow artists, she strongly advocated in favor of the United States entering World War II. This led to her essentially being blacklisted in artistic circles, effectively ending her career. At the same time, pro-Fascist poets such as Ezra Pound continued to receive accolades. 

Millay wrote about 160 sonnets, about the same as Shakespeare. They are not all related in the same way, but there are definitely themes that flow through most of them. There are three sonnet sets, both of which are haunting and moving. The first is Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree, which tells, over the course of 17 poems, the story of a wife caring for her dying husband who she separated from years ago. The second is The Harp Weaver, a tale of a mother who freezes to death creating a lavish wardrobe for her child. It is not difficult to see in both of these a reflection of Millay’s mother, whose life was harshly circumscribed by her failed marriage to a worthless man, and her need to sacrifice herself to keep her children fed. The third collection is Fatal Interview, believed to have been written about a long term relationship of hers which had ended. It is a devastating look at love, loss, and the ravages of time and age. 

Although there are a few exceptions, these themes tend to run through the other sonnets as well. Millay’s musings on the nature of love, desire, sex, loss, grief, pain, and endings are just amazing, really. I had not realized that these poems existed, but this book is now one of my favorites. 

Here are a few that stood out - although I could have listed most of them here. This one is from her first collection, Renascence, written in her late teens. 

THOU art not lovelier than lilacs,—no,     

Nor honeysuckle; thou art not more fair     

Than small white single poppies,—I can bear 

Thy beauty; though I bend before thee, though 

From left to right, not knowing where to go,        

I turn my troubled eyes, nor here nor there     

Find any refuge from thee, yet I swear 

So has it been with mist,—with moonlight so.   

Like him who day by day unto his draught     

Of delicate poison adds him one drop more        

Till he may drink unharmed the death of ten, 

Even so, inured to beauty, who have quaffed     

Each hour more deeply than the hour before, 

I drink—and live—what has destroyed some men.

This illustrates one of her skills: taking a mushy love-sentiment, and somehow turning it a wee bit poisonous. There is a sting in this and other poems. Like this one. 

Love, though for this you riddle me with darts,

And drag me at your chariot till I die,—

Oh, heavy prince! O, panderer of hearts!—

Yet hear me tell how in their throats they lie

Who shout you mighty: thick about my hair,

Day in, day out, your ominous arrows purr,

Who still am free, unto no querulous care

A fool, and in no temple worshiper!

I, that have bared me to your quiver’s fire,

Lifted my face into its puny rain,

Do wreathe you Impotent to Evoke Desire

As you are Powerless to Elicit Pain!

(Now will the god, for blasphemy so brave,

Punish me, surely, with the shaft I crave!)

A bit of reverse psychology there, and yet so much angst. 

This next one is definitely a favorite. Having been raised in a subculture pounded into us the ideas that Marriage is Miserable Hard Work™, Commitment™, Keep Your Vows Even If Abused™ and the rest of the idolatry of marriage and family, I have been drawn very much to the counter-idea: that a good relationship shouldn’t feel like martyrdom, and that one should actually be happy to be around one’s beloved. 

OH, THINK not I am faithful to a vow!

Faithless am I save to love's self alone.

Were you not lovely I would leave you now:

After the feet of beauty fly my own.

Were you not still my hunger's rarest food,

And water ever to my wildest thirst,

I would desert you–think not but I would!–

And seek another as I sought you first.

But you are mobile as the veering air,

And all your charms more changeful than the tide,

Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:

I have but to continue at your side.

So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,

I am most faithless when I most am true.  

Elizabeth Barrett Browning also captured some of this in her sonnets (also favorites of mine - I’m a hopeless romantic). Here is another one with delightful ambiguity about love:

Loving you less than life, a little less

Than bitter-sweet upon a broken wall

Or brush-wood smoke in autumn, I confess

I cannot swear I love you not at all.

For there is that about you in this light—

A yellow darkness, sinister of rain—

Which sturdily recalls my stubborn sight

To dwell on you, and dwell on you again.

And I am made aware of many a week

I shall consume, remembering in what way

Your brown hair grows about your brow and cheek

And what divine absurdities you say:

Till all the world, and I, and surely you,

Will know I love you, whether or not I do.

Less lighthearted is this one:

Once more into my arid days like dew,

Like wind from an oasis, or the sound

Of cold sweet water bubbling underground,

A treacherous messenger, the thought of you

Comes to destroy me; once more I renew

Firm faith in your abundance, whom I found

Long since to be but just one other mound

Of sand, whereon no green thing ever grew.

And once again, and wiser in no wise,

I chase your colored phantom on the air,

And sob and curse and fall and weep and rise

And stumble pitifully on to where,

Miserable and lost, with stinging eyes,

Once more I clasp,—and there is nothing there.

Again, just a brilliant picture. Bitter and yet full of desire. 

This next one is another favorite. 

Let you not say of me when I am old,

In pretty worship of my withered hands

Forgetting who I am, and how the sands

Of such a life as mine run red and gold

Even to the ultimate sifting dust, "Behold,

Here walketh passionless age!"—for there expands

A curious superstition in these lands,

And by its leave some weightless tales are told.

In me no lenten wicks watch out the night;

I am the booth where Folly holds her fair;

Impious no less in ruin than in strength,

When I lie crumbled to the earth at length,

Let you not say, "Upon this reverend site

The righteous groaned and beat their breasts in prayer." 

A few layers to this one, to say the least. Millay challenges the idea that the elderly are sexless, or extra-righteous, or merely to be reverenced. She is still herself, passionate, impious, and the same as she ever was. 

I quote this next one because of an experience of my wife. This obnoxious racist dickhead who was the parent of a kid (poor guy) who was in band with one of my kids came up to her and said something nearly word for word as that said in this poem. (Do I even need to add that this guy is a huge Trump fan? Or that he was FINALLY banned from a local homeschool forum after repeated posts of neo-confederate and other vile propaganda?) 

Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!

Give back my book and take my kiss instead.

Was it my enemy or my friend I heard,

“What a big book for such a little head!”

Come, I will show you now my newest hat,

And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink!

Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that.

I never again shall tell you what I think.

I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly;

You will not catch me reading any more:

I shall be called a wife to pattern by;

And some day when you knock and push the door,

Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy,

I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me.

Dude was literally acting surprised my wife was reading a “big book.” He probably has no idea about the stuff that she read while still a kid. After this incident, when she withered him with a glare, we have taken to calling him “Tiny Books.” Because his books are probably like the “hands” of his political idol. I am also reminded of one of my favorite bits by James Thurber. 

I unfortunately cannot quote all of Fatal Interview, but highly recommend it as a poem cycle. Here is the opening sonnet:

What thing is this that, built of salt and lime

And such dry motes as in the sunbeam show,

Has power upon me that do daily climb

The dustless air?—for whom those peaks of snow

Whereup the lungs of man with borrowed breath

Go labouring to a doom I may not feel,

Are but a pearled and roseate plain beneath

My wingèd helmet and my wingèd heel.

What sweet emotions neither foe nor friend

Are these that clog my flight? what thing is this

That hastening headlong to a dusty end

Dare turn upon me these proud eyes of bliss?

Up, up, my feathers!—ere I lay you by

To journey barefoot with a mortal joy.

From there, the cycle veers from the ecstacy of love to the depths of despair to the resignation to the depredations of time. This one, from early in the series, is as good of a love poem as I have read. 

Not in a silver casket cool with pearls

Or rich with red corundum or with blue,

Locked, and the key withheld, as other girls

Have given their loves, I give my love to you;

Not in a lovers'-knot, not in a ring

Worked in such fashion, and the legend plain—

Semper fidelis, where a secret spring

Kennels a drop of mischief for the brain:

Love in the open hand, no thing but that,

Ungemmed, unhidden, wishing not to hurt,

As one should bring you cowslips in a hat

Swung from the hand, or apples in her skirt,

I bring you, calling out as children do:

"Look what I have!—And these are all for you."

It just gets better every time I re-read it. And the form is perfect. The two ideas in the two quatrains, followed by the turn in line nine, and the last couplet so memorable and true. 

A later poem from the series take the theme carpe diem, but with the twist that what youth doesn’t use, age will twist into something ugly. Unfortunately, what came to mind with this one was the way that my parents’ generation has mostly grown unwise with age, giving in to “compromise and fear,” selling their souls to preserve a mythical past. 

Heart, have no pity on this house of bone:

Shake it with dancing, break it down with joy.

No man holds mortgage on it; it is your own;

To give, to sell at auction, to destroy.

When you are blind to moonlight on the bed,

When you are deaf to gravel on the pane,

Shall quavering caution from this house instead

Cluck forth at summer mischief in the lane?

All that delightful youth forbears to spend

Molestful age inherits, and the ground

Will have us; therefore, while we're young, my friend—

The Latin's vulgar, but the advice is sound.

Youth, have no pity; leave no farthing here

For age to invest in compromise and fear.

This next one is pretty dang dark. The relationship has begun to turn a bit, and the combination of doubt, ennui, and suspicion creep around the corner. 

Most wicked words!-forbear to speak them out.

Utter them not again; blaspheme no more

Against our love with maxims learned from Doubt:

Lest Death should get his foot inside the door.

We are surrounded by a hundred foes;

And he that at your bidding joins our feast,

I stake my heart upon it, is one of those,

Nor in their councils does he sit the least.

Hark not his whisper: he is Time’s ally,

Kinsman to Death, and leman of Despair:

Believe that I shall love you till I die;

Believe; and thrust him forth; and arm the stair;

And top the walls with spikes and splintered glass

That he pass gutted should again he pass.”

While not the bulk of the poems, there are a few which are about altogether different topics. One that I found particularly interesting is this one, written in honor of suffragist Inez Milholland. Who also happened to be Millay’s husband’s first wife - she died a few years prior to Millay’s relationship with her husband. 

Upon this marble bust that is not I

Lay the round, formal wreath that is not fame;

But in the forum of my silenced cry

Root ye the living tree whose sap is flame.

I, that was proud and valiant, am no more; ---

Save as a dream that wanders wide and late,

Save as a wind that rattles the stout door,

Troubling the ashes in the sheltered grate.

The stone will perish; I shall be twice dust.

Only my standard on a taken hill

Can cheat the mildew and the red-brown rust

And make immortal my adventurous will.

Even now the silk is tugging at the staff:

Take up the song; forget the epitaph.

That’s a seriously great epitaph. Milholland would die before realizing the dream of voting rights for women - a cause Millay also supported. 

This next poem is more about nature - both nature in the sense of the natural world, but also in the sense of human nature. And not a very nice part of that second nature either. 

Enormous moon, that rise behind these hills

Heavy and yellow in a sky unstarred

And pale, your girth by purple fillets barred

Of drifting cloud, that as the cool sky fills

With planets and the brighter stars, distills

To thinnest vapor and floats valley-ward, —

You flood with radiance all this cluttered yard,

The sagging fence, the chipping window sills!

 Grateful at heart as if for my delight

You rose, I watch you through a mist of tears,

Thinking how man, who gags upon despair,

Salting his hunger with the sweat of fright

Has fed on cold indifference all these years,

Calling it kindness, calling it God’s care.

Millay was concerned about the modern American - or perhaps Western - tendency toward social darwinism and of a “science” devoid of humanity or empathy. In our own times, we are still continuing to pay for this soulless vision of technology and raw capitalism. As Millay points out, we embrace data points without context, without wisdom, without kindness. It is power for power’s sake. 

Upon this age, that never speaks its mind,

This furtive age, this age endowed with power

To wake the moon with footsteps, fit an oar

Into the rowlocks of the wind, and find

What swims before his prow, what swirls behind ---

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,

Rains from the sky a meteoric shower

Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined.

Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill

Is daily spun; but there exists no loom

To weave it into fabric; undefiled

Proceeds pure Science, and has her say; but still

Upon this world from the collective womb

Is spewed all day the red triumphant child. 

It’s a bit of a downer to end on, alas. Millay’s poems do seem to get darker over time, and it is easy enough to see why. This poem was published in a collection dated 1939, and there is no secret about the state of the world at that time. Fascism threatened to envelope at least Europe, and possibly the world. Although it would be anachronistic to read the horrors of nuclear war into this poem, it fits all too well. 

The collection as a whole is more thoughtful than exuberant, more focused on time and loss than on the ecstacy of love - although that is present as well. The poems stand up so well, though, because of this emotionally realistic approach to life and love. All is not well, and along with joy and love come loss and pain.