I take one every morning
sometimes they go down easy and
sometimes they’re hard to swallow
but poems are my vitamins
I take one every morning
sometimes they go down easy and
sometimes they’re hard to swallow
but poems are my vitamins
Oliver, who cited Walt Whitman as an influence, is best known for her awe-filled, often hopeful, reflections on and observations of nature. “Mary Oliver’s poetry is an excellent antidote for the excesses of civilization,” wrote one reviewer for the Harvard Review, “for too much flurry and inattention, and the baroque conventions of our social and professional lives. She is a poet of wisdom and generosity whose vision allows us to look intimately at a world not of our making.”
Her honors include an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award, a Lannan Literary Award, the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Prize and Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Oliver held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College until 2001. She lived for over forty years in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with her partner Molly Malone Cook, a photographer and gallery owner. After Cook’s death in 2005, Oliver later moved to the southeastern coast of Florida. Oliver died of cancer at the age of eighty-three in Hobe Sound, Florida, on January 17, 2019.
*This contents of this post come from Poets.org
Mary Oliver reminds me to look to nature whenever I feel humans are letting the world down. Rejoice in the strength of the trees and the persistent bloom of flowers.
-CCW
Cacophony reigns
Second to last day of school
Silence beckons me
*Just being funny. I actually had a great day with my students. But they were loud.
If you can be happy whether or not you get that (name the external thing), then you are truly happy.
Byron Katie
I used to be a nightshade,
slow to rise and rouse myself at daybreak,
active and alert by the light of the moon,
happy to be a nocturnal brute
but mothering lent solitude only at dawn,
and I craved the quiet and calm,
So I rose with the sun and sometimes aforetime,
and now I wilt early – often before nine!
Their fighting is your inner battle – your own malcontent
when the volume rises and their words get sharp
when your heart seeks shelter and your fingers flutter
let it roll over you
they’ll work it out with fists of hurt
and lash each other with words of stone
until they’re bruised and bloodied
let it roll over you
let it go
it’s theirs
not yours
Moment by moment,
with each flick of the paintbrush
each note of music played –
each scratch of the pen –
and every key stroke –
beauty!
…and thus, joy
Bliss is in the details
Here’s a shiny new bowl,
with crushed ice and filtered water
She snubs it – actually walks away –
and seeks water from the murky plant bowl
that captures rainwater,
soil and dead plant parts
daft dog!
My daughter brings books from school
Sherman Alexie and John Cheever
mesmerizing, momentous and magnificent
Indigenous American meets Chekhov of the Suburbs
stories of the malcontents,
the maniacs and the maculate
This teen is spellbound
macrocosms beyond her self now revealed
like I was, when I first split a book in two
*part of my alphabiography series
In a split second – the bond is ruptured
an accident, a mishap, a casualty
first, shock, then pain
this disconnect of parts
damaged
autografts are best
heal thyself