Happy Birthday Mary Oliver

Of all the books by Mary Oliver that I own, the one I keep going back to over and over again isn't a volume of poetry, rather a volume about poetry.  A Poetry Handbooks:  A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry is ostensibly a book for those who want to hone their craft.  Elements such as diction, voice, tone, imagery, sound, meter are discussed in surprising depth for such a short book-- a mere 122 pages excluding acknowledgments and the index.  Understanding these elements not only makes for better writers of any sort, it also makes for better readers.  Just as my art history professor in university said she was going to teach us the basic elements of art so that we could verbalize why we liked or disliked a particular painting, so does grasping the elements of a poem allows readers/hearers to understand why a particular poem does or doesn't work for them. 

And yes, all that's wonderful and reason enough to return to A Poetry Handbook but what really keeps this book on my bed-side table and has me underlining passages in different colors each time I read it are the words of wisdom that go beyond the sitting-at-a-desk-putting-words-on-paper work of a writer and get to the body/mind/heart of writing.  The way we are in and with the world impacts the way were are in and with words.  

So in honor of her birthday today, rather than a poem for Mary Oliver Monday, I thought I'd share some of my favorite lines from A Poetry Handbook (Harcourt, Inc.). 



"Poetry is a river, many voices travel in it; poem after poem moves along in the exciting crests and falls of the river waves.  None is timeless; each arrives in an historical context; almost everything, in the end, passes.  But the desire to make a poem, and the world's willingness to receive it-- indeed the world's need of it-- these never pass." 

"To write well, it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply."

" . . . the space between daily language and literature is neither terribly deep nor wide, but it does contain a vital difference-- of intent and intensity."

"A 'rock' is not a 'stone'.  But why is a rock not a stone?"

"Language is rich, and malleable.  It is a living, vibrant material . . . "

"Rhythm underlies everything."

"The language of the poem is the language of particulars."

"Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.  Also, it began through the process of seeing, and feeling, and hearing, and smelling, and touching, and then remembering-- I mean remembering in words--what these perceptual experiences were like, while trying to describe the endless invisible fears and desires of our inner lives."

Henri Rousseau - The Dream

"To interrupt the writer from a line of thought is to wake the dreamer from the dream."

"No one can tell you how to make the best writing happen.  For one poet at least, short naps have proved helpful; for him, leaving consciousness for a brief time is invitational to the inner, 'poetic' voice.  For myself, walking works in a similar way.  I walk slowly, and not to get anywhere in particular, but because the motion somehow helps the poem to begin.  I end up, usually standing still, writing something down in the small notebook I always have with me.  For yourself, neither napping nor walking has to be the answer.  But, something is.  The point is to try various activities or arrangements until you find out what works for you."

"Athletes take care of their bodies.  Writers must similarly take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems.  There is nourishment in books, other art, history, philosophies-- in holiness and mirth.  It is an honest hands-on-labor also; I don't mean to indicate a preference for the scholarly life.  And it is in the green world-- among people, and animals, and trees for that matter, if one genuinely cares about trees.  A mind that is lively and inquiring, compassionate, curious, angry, full of music, full of feeling, is a mind full of possible poetry."

"For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.  Yes, indeed."