Archives for posts with tag: Mary Oliver

Self-Portrait, poem by Mary Oliver

July 24, 2014 //

SELF-PORTRAIT
by Mary Oliver

I wish I was twenty and in love with life
and still full of beans.

Onward, old legs!
There are the long, pale dunes; on the other side
the roses are blooming and finding their labor
no adversity to the spirit.

Upward, old legs! There are the roses, and there is the sea
shining like a song, like a body
I want to touch

though I’m not twenty
and won’t be again but ah! seventy. And still
in love with life. And still
full of beans.

IMAGE: “Wild Geese,” acrylic on canvas by Blanca Botero-Fuentes, inspired by Mary Oliver’s poem of the same title. The painting was featured in the 2011 exhibit A Dialogue: Poetry-inspired painting by Blanca Botero-Fuentes, with a print catalog available at blurb.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mary Oliver is a poet that New York Times described as “far and away, [America’s] best-selling poet.” Her first collection of poems, No Voyage, and Other Poems, was released in 1963. Since then, she has published numerous books, including A Thousand Mornings (2012), New and Selected Poems (1992) — winner of the National Book award — and American Primitive (1983), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize.

Tags Art, Artists, Authors, Mary Oliver, painting, Poems, poetry, poets, Writers, Writing

Categories Art, Poetry

Morning Glories, poem by Mary Oliver

June 28, 2014 //

MORNING GLORIES
by Mary Oliver

Blue and dark blue
rose and deepest rose
white and pink they

are everywhere in the diligent
cornfield rising and swaying
in their reliable

finery in the little
fling of their bodies their
gear and tackle

all caught up in the cornstalks.
The reaper’s story is the story
of endless work of

work careful and heavy but the
reaper cannot
separate them out there they

are in the story of his life
bright random useless
year after year

taken with the serious tons
weeds without value humorous
beautiful weeds.

SOURCE: Poetry (October 1994)

IMAGE: Morning glories in a cornfield.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mary Oliver is a poet that New York Times described as “far and away, [America’s] best-selling poet.” Her first collection of poems, No Voyage, and Other Poems, was published in 1963. Since then, she has published numerous books, including A Thousand Mornings (2012); Swan: Poems and Prose Poems (2010); Red Bird (2008); Thirst (2006); Why I Wake Early (2004); Owls and Other Fantasies : Poems and Essays (2003); Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems (1999); West Wind (1997); White Pine (1994); New and Selected Poems (1992), which won the National Book award; House of Light (1990), which won the Christopher Award and the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award; and American Primitive (1983), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize.

Tags Authors, flowers, Mary Oliver, nature, Poem, poetry, poets, Writers, Writing

Categories Poetry

White-Eyes, poem by Mary Oliver

January 3, 2014 //

WHITE-EYES
Poem by Mary Oliver

In winter
    all the singing is in
         the tops of the trees
             where the wind-bird

with its white eyes
    shoves and pushes
         among the branches.
             Like any of us

he wants to go to sleep,
    but he’s restless—
         he has an idea,
             and slowly it unfolds

from under his beating wings
    as long as he stays awake.
         But his big, round music, after all,
             is too breathy to last.

So, it’s over.
    In the pine-crown
         he makes his nest,
             he’s done all he can.

I don’t know the name of this bird,
    I only imagine his glittering beak
         tucked in a white wing
             while the clouds—

which he has summoned
    from the north—
         which he has taught
             to be mild, and silent—

thicken, and begin to fall
    into the world below
         like stars, or the feathers
               of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,
    that is asleep now, and silent—
         that has turned itself
             into snow.

Tags birds, environment, Mary Oliver, nature, Poems, poetry, poets, trees, White-Eyes by Mary Oliver, winter poem, women poets

Categories Poetry, Women Authors

Orion the Hunter, poem by Grace O’Malley

January 2, 2014 //

ORION THE HUNTER
by Grace O’Malley

He stands in my doorway
like a cross.
The hunter has come down.
He walks me under street lights
which are more sullen and yellower
than the full moon — its cool
blind eye of bone
and fracture high high above.
His bronze face pure
with starlight or anger
or perhaps love.
“The world
will never be your idea of just
or merciful.”
It all seems one
and I feel it
like an arrow’s blade
at the division between
bone and muscle,
soul and spirit,
like hunger
but more like the craving
after beauty
that is only for brief
apocalyptic
moments satisfied.
Tense
as a bowstring, the
artistry of one straight line,
he walks away
and under the moonlight
is one motion,
flowing up like a spring
from the tendon of the heel.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This poem owes a debt to poet Mary Oliver, who wrote a poem about the constellation Orion coming down out of the sky to talk to her…in my poem the figure of Orion is God. This piece is about me growing up — the necessity of facing the fact that the world is full of evil and injustice, while still holding onto my identity as a person with a moral compass, a person who can relate to God in the midst of an unjust world. It is about the balance in life between knowing that “things just aren’t fair” and living as an individual with integrity anyway. To be a whole person, I think one has to come to terms with these two sides of life. It is also inspired by my habit of long late night walks, sometimes talking to God about the troubles of the world, and sometimes just being with him.

Tags Art, astronomy, Authors, deity, famous poets, God, Mary Oliver, Orion, painting, Poem, Poet, poetry, winter, Women Authors, Writers, Writing

Categories Poetry, Women Authors

Orion, poem by Mary Oliver

January 2, 2014 //

ORION
by Mary Oliver

I love Orion, his fiery body, his ten stars,
his flaring points of reference, his shining dogs. 
“It is winter,” he says.
“We must eat,” he says. Our gloomy 
and passionate teacher.  
Miles below 
in the cold woods, with the mouse and the owl,  
with the clearness of water sheeted and hidden, 
with the reason for the wind forever a secret,
 he descends and sits with me, his voice
 like the snapping of bones.  
Behind him 
everything is so black and unclassical; behind him
I don’t know anything, not even 
my own mind. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mary Oliver (born September 10, 1935) is an American poet who has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times described her as “far and away, [America’s] best-selling poet”. (Read more at wikipedia.org.)

Tags Art, astronomy, Authors, famous poets, Mary Oliver, Orion, painting, Poem, Poet, poetry, winter, Women Authors, Writers, Writing

Categories Poetry, Women Authors

Wild Geese, poem by Mary Oliver

December 13, 2013 //

WILD GEESE
by Mary Oliver

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.

“Wild Geese” appears in Mary Oliver’s collection Dream Work (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986, © Mary Oliver), available at Amazon.com.

Tags Authors, birds, environment, geese, inspiration, Mary Oliver, Musings, nature, Poems, Poet, poetry, Women Authors, women poets, Writers, Writing

Categories Poetry, Women Authors

Herons in Winter in the Frozen Marsh, poem by Mary Oliver

November 30, 2013 //

HERONS IN WINTER IN THE FROZEN MARSH

by Mary Oliver

All winter
two blue herons
hunkered in the frozen marsh,
like two columns of blue smoke.

What they ate
I can’t imagine,
unless it was the small laces
of snow that settled

in the ruckus of the cattails,
or the glazed windows of ice
under the tired
pitchforks of their feet—

so the answer is
they ate nothing,
and nothing good could come of that.
They were mired in nature, and starving.

Still, every morning
they shrugged the rime from their shoulders,
and all day they
stood to attention

in the stubbled desolation.
I was filled with admiration,
sympathy,
and, of course, empathy.

It called for a miracle.
Finally the marsh softened,
and their wings cranked open
revealing the old blue light,

so that I thought: how could this possibly be
the blunt, dark finish?
First one, then the other, vanished
into the ditches and upheavals.

All spring, I watched the rising blue-green grass,
above its gleaming and substantial shadows,
toss in the breeze,
like wings.

“Herons in Winter in the Frozen Marsh” by Mary Oliver, from Owls and other Fantasies: Poems and Essays. © Beacon Press, 2003, available on Amazon.com.

Tags birds, environment, famous poets, Mary Oliver, nature, nature photography, photography, Poems, poetry, poets, wildlife, winter, women poets

Categories Nature, Poetry, winter, Women Authors

The Swan, poem by Mary Oliver

October 21, 2013 //

THE SWAN
Poem by Mary Oliver

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air –
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds –
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

Tags Authors, birds, flying birds, Mary Oliver, Poems, poetry, poets, swans, women poets, women writers, Writers, Writing

Categories Nature, Poetry, Uncategorized, Women Authors

The Summer Day, poem by Mary Oliver

June 21, 2013 //

THE SUMMER DAY
By Mary Oliver

Who made the world? 
Who made the swan, and the black bear? 
Who made the grasshopper? 
This grasshopper, I mean –
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. 
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. 
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down 
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, 
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, 
which is what I have been doing all day. 
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?