I’m not usually one to get affected or upset when a celebrity dies. I reserve my grief for people I actually knew and loved, and who knew and loved me in return. Sometimes, though, we do feel an affinity with people we have never met or known on a personal level, and when I heard of Mary Oliver’s passing, I was struck with the sadness that such a literary light would no longer be shining in our dim world. She’s been featured here a number of times, with a number of her poems, because she put things into words in a beautiful, simple, heartrending way of which I could only dream of approaching. Her descriptive art form distilled the beauty of nature into a palpable human experience, not in a way that was cloying or trite, but in the most profoundly simple and moving manner. She invited her readers to participate without leaving their arm chairs – but she inspired most of us to do that too. Explore, she seemed to implore. Experience, she seemed to evince. Like Auntie Mame, what she wanted most to do was live, live, live! That sort of spirit, and the resulting body of work she leaves behind, is the immortal gift of art. It’s also the mark of someone who made the world a little better while she was here.
I will miss looking for a new collection of poems from her in the bookstore, but I will share her work with my niece and nephew and any other children that cross my path, in the hopes that she will live on like all great artists.
- Goldenrod
- The Poet Compares Human Nature to the Ocean From Which We Came
- Early Snow
- First Snow
- Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith
- Such Singing in the Wild Branches
- The Sun
- The Place I Want To Get Back To
- Poem (The Spirit Likes to Dress Up)
- White-Eyes
- No Voyage
- Sleeping in the Forest
- Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness
- Fall Song
- Night and the River
- Mozart, For Example
- A Note Left on the Door
- The Poet Visits the Museum of Fine Arts
- Doesn’t Every Poet Write a Poem of Unrequited Love?
- A Pretty Song
- Trilliums
- Of Love
- The Summer Day
- The Journey
- When Death Comes
It is better for the heart to break, than not to break. – Mary Oliver
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