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ARTS AND CULTURE

The prayer-poems of Mary Oliver

  • 31 January 2019

 

'Let me keep company always with those who say / 'Look!' and laugh in astonishment, / and bow their heads.' — 'Mysteries, Yes', by Mary Oliver When Mary Oliver was very young she loved the poet William Blake so much that she carried around a picture of him in her wallet. On the back she wrote, 'Uncle William.'

Recently we learned of her death in Florida from lymphoma at 83. Flooding my Facebook page were tributes. Perhaps this is indicative of my friends on social media, but increasingly I hear her poetry quoted: recently an Anglican bishop told me she was his current favourite poet. Oliver's poems can appear unexpectedly like those 'gannets diving' or 'a small planet flying past', a swarm of bees 'all anointed with excitement'. Her words are 'unstoppable'. ('Hum, Hum').

'Why do I have so many thoughts, they are driving me crazy. / Why am I always going anywhere, instead of somewhere?' she asks in 'I Don't Want to be Demure or Respectable'. Her poetry is abundant with images of nature: mountains, trees, crickets, chickens, grass, owls, swans, herons ...

There's a whole volume dedicated to Dog Songs, including tributes to her beloved Percy, echoing Christopher Smart's 'My Cat Jeffry': 'For he came to me impaired and therefore certain of short life, yet thoroughly rejoiced in each day ... / For he was a mixture of gravity and waggery ... / For he took actions both cunning and reckless, yet refused always to offer himself to be admonished ... / For when he lay down to sleep he did not argue about whether or not God made him. ('For I Will Consider My Dog Percy') And, of course, her most oft quoted final two lines from 'The Summer Day': 'Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?'

Mary Oliver was born in 1935 in Maple Heights, Ohio. She attended Ohio State University and Vassar College. Her first published collection of poetry was when she was 28 years old. Her fifth publication, American Primitive, won the Pulitzer prize for poetry in 1984, and her New and Selected Poems the National Book Award in 1992. She was awarded a number of honorary doctorates, taught poetry and held residences in various Universities and Colleges in the United States until 2001.

With her partner for over 40 years, photographer Molly Malone Cook, she lived in Provincetown Massachusetts.

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