Mary Oliver! My Love!

When life is confusing and isolating and uninspiring, I wander into the bookstore to buy another Mary Oliver poetry collection and read the entire book in one sitting. I turn each page to absorb her images of oak trees, river-beds, swans, and solitary beings. To me, she is meditative, invigorating, and sacred. I take her floppy paperback poems in my hands, and use my pen to draw stars, exclamation points, brackets around my most favorite verses. This is how I know to be steady again.

So I will take your hand and guide you through the forest of her 2008 collection, Red Bird, to hopefully nudge you closer towards the poetry section next time you’re in a bookstore. Also, Mary Oliver is incredibly readable, so she is a good poet to ease yourself into poetic waters. (Or you’re welcome to continue to lead your boring life without poetry, up to you.)

When she was seventy years old, living in Providence Town, Virginia, Oliver wrote Red Bird, collected from subjects such as: her observations on nature walks, the loves and losses of her life, the national grief of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and her pesky dog named Percy.

Basically, I’m inviting you to journey through my thoughts while reading the book.

Let’s begin.

We must discuss the first poem which is also the title poem, “Red Bird” in its accomplishments of introducing the reader to central themes of the text.

Red bird came all winter

Firing up the landscape

As nothing else could.

Of course I love the sparrows,

Those dun-colored darlings,

So hungry and so many.

I am a God-fearing feeder of birds,

I know he has many children,

Not all of them bold in spirit.

Still, for whatever reason-

Perhaps because the winter is so long

And the sky so black-blue,

Or perhaps because the heart narrows

As often as it opens-

I am grateful

That red bird comes all winter

Firing up the landscape

As nothing else can do.

In the opening lines Oliver writes, “Red bird came all winter/ firing up the landscape/ as nothing else could,” positioning the red bird as the motivator of the magic in the poem while the speaker observes. This red bird is the blood rush of winter, the reminder of the brightness in being for the speaker, “Still, for whatever reason—/ perhaps because the winter is so long/and the sky so black-blue,” a juxtaposition of winter’s darkness. The omission of the article to qualify the red bird for it is just “Red bird,” not the “The Red bird,” or even “A red bird,” is purposeful in attributing a plurality to the bird as well as a tenderness or simplicity as if the speaker refers the bird as “red bird” in her own mind. The use of “still” is significant in representing the continuation and resembling the posture of Oliver’s poetry of remaining still in reflection of nature. Oliver continues, “or perhaps because the heart narrows/ as often as it opens—/ I am grateful,” this image of the heart narrowing and opening like our diaphragm inflates and deflates when we breathe is this beautiful bonding of the bodily and emotional reactions to nature.The last stanza mirrors the first in saying, “that red bird comes all winter/ firing up the landscape/ as nothing else can do,” changing the verbiage from past tense to present tense, presenting a feeling of intimacy with activity of the poem as well as a confirmation in the continuous nature of the red bird’s comings. This poem situates the reader in a humble mode of observation, of attentiveness that reverence for nature has the potential to be more than a passing notion but emotionally gratifying.

This spiritual relationship with nature is a hallmark of Oliver’s poetry but I want to turn to a little comedic moment on page 29 (please turn to the page to follow along) to a poem titled “Percy and Books (Eight),” to delight in a silly poem with Mary.

Percy does not like it when I read a book.

He puts his face over the top of it and moans,

He rolls his eyes, sometimes he sneezes.

The sun is up, he says, and the wind is down.

The tide is out and the neighbor's dogs are playing.

But Percy, I say. Ideas! The elegance of language!

...Books? says Percy. I ate one once, and it was enough.

Let's go.

The first line begins, “Percy does not like it when I read a book,” detailing how he will obscure her view or try to get her attention, “He rolls his eyes, sometimes he sneezes.” Oliver gives voice to her dog in the poem, making him the hero of the poem and the speaker in opposition with the hero, reading. The speaker refutes the dog’s wanting to go outside, “But Percy, I say. Ideas! The elegance of language!/ The insights, the funniness, the beautiful stories/ that rise and fall and turn into strength, or courage,” arguing for the active nature of imagination of the reader. Oliver gives all the “insights,” and “funniness,” to Percy in the poem to record his mischief with her own utilization of language. The use of “courage” illuminates the vulnerability the writer exhibits in the act of writing itself. The dog, though, wants to really run, responding, “Books? Says Percy/ I ate one once, and it was enough/Let’s go,” encapsulating the pun of the title. Like why is this a satirical poem about an anti-intellectual dog except that it is not a poem about an anti-intellectual dog at all? Mostly it’s for funzies but also is still an Idea? Poems can really do and be anything. That’s why I love these little pourings of words on pages, because their charms are so elastic.

Okay let’s resume with a close reading of two sections from “Eleven Versions of the Same Poem,” the first one being, “I don’t want to live a small life” on page 67.

I don’t want to live a small life. Open your eyes,

open your hands. I have just come

from the berry fields, the sun

kissing me with its golden mouth all the way

(open your hands) and the wind-winged clouds

following along thinking perhaps I might

feed them, but no I carry these heart-shapes

only to you. Look how many how small

but so sweet and maybe the last gift

I will ever bring to anyone in this

world of hope and risk, so do.

Look at me. Open your life, open your hands.

The refrain, “open your hands,” is a gesture of exposure, of compassion to enrich your life by osmosis, that Oliver’s time spent in nature aggrandizes her life. This gesture of outreach calls the Tow'rs lyrics from “All the Sundered Things,” to mind, “But I can’t get my arms wide enough, / No, I can’t get my arms wide enough,” similarly assuming this posture of surrender. The position of open hands or arms wide are symbols of embrace, but they are also symbols of separation—an open palm peels the fingers from the palm or reaching with arms wide removes them from one’s side, jutting outward as if one could be sundered, split. These moments are aiming to embrace an external feeling to distance oneself from internal anxiety about personal meaning, that existence is informed by the environment. Oliver writes of the sun kissing the speaker with “its golden mouth”, showing the natural world as capable of supplying affection for the speaker. The act of “carrying these heart-shapes/ only to you,” feels like a mission statement of the emotionality that she writes her poetry to give directly to the reader.

Further, Oliver drafts another version of the same poem, “I will try” on page 75.

I will try.

I will step from the house to see what I see

and hear and I will praise it.

I did not come into this world

to be comforted.

I came, like red bird, to sing.

But I’m not red bird, with his head-mop of flame

and the red triangle of his mouth

full of tongue and whistles,

but a woman whose love has vanished,

who thinks now, too much, of roots

and the dark places

where everything is simply holding on.

But this too, I believe, is a place

where God is keeping watch

until we rise, and step forth again and –

but wait. Be still. Listen!

Is it red bird? Or something

inside myself, singing?

I love this poem for its confessional quality, these moments of wavering courage, the speaker expressing difficulty, “But I’m not red bird… but a woman whose love has vanished/ who thinks now, too much, of roots/ and dark places/ where everything is simply holding on;” this is a rich display of humanity in this sense of being inhibited or clinging to the ground, perceiving lovelessness. Yet she finds the grasp of hope in an internal thing this time, returning to her faith. That in stillness, the harmonies of the self reverberate as evidence for existence as well. The questions of internality versus externality she poses in “ I don’t want to lead a small life,” she resurfaces in “I will try,” comparing herself to red bird, this burst of beauty on a landscape, unable to recognize her own burst. Yet she waits to discover that in the disposition of stillness there is the song of self.

I will leave you with those four poems, so you can uncover Mary Oliver’s poetic delights on your own. Her clairvoyance of observance is continually buoying. Another poet, Maxine Kumin, wrote that Mary Oliver is “an indefatigable guide to the natural world,” articulating her steady devotion to nature. The personal component of Oliver’s poetry is profound to me in that this is a poet that I continually clutch for the hand of her poetry to remind me of myself, to remind me of life. Maybe she will provide a place of soothing, ultimately teaching you how to soothe yourself.