Quotes from Mary Oliver

I know I can walk through the world

We may be touched by the most powerful of suppositions--even to a certainty--as we stand in the rose petals of the sun and hear a murmur from the wind no louder than the sound it makes as it dozes under the bee's wings. This, too, I suggest, is the weather, and worthy of report.

But dawn - dawn is a gift. Much is revealed about a person by his or her passion, or indifference, to this opening of the door of day. No one who loves dawn, and is abroad to see it, could be a stranger to me.

You listen and you know You could live a better life than you do, be Softer, kinder. And maybe this year you will Be able to do it.

from Emerson's journals. In the context, it is written in the past tense; changing the verb to present tense it reads: The poem is a confession of faith. Which is to say, the poem is not an exercise. It is not 'wordplay.' Whatever skill or beauty it has, in contains something beyond language devices, and has a purpose other than itself.

Athletes take care of their bodies. Writers must similarly take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of the poems. There is nourishment in books, other art, history, philosophies--in holiness and mirth.

Is a prayer a gift, or a petition, or does it matter? The sunflowers blaze, maybe that's their way. Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not.

I would write praise poems that might serve as comforts, reminders, or even cautions if needed, to wayward minds and unawakened hearts.

Stepping out into the world, into the grass, onto the path, was always a kind of relief. I was not escaping anything. I was returning to the arena of delight.

This morning two mockingbirds in the green field were spinning and tossing the white ribbons of their songs into the air. I had nothing better to do than listen. I mean this seriously.

How sometimes everything closes up, a painted fan, landscapes and moments flowing together until the sense of distance— say, between Clapp's Pond and me— vanishes, edges slide together like the feathers of a wing, everything touches everything.

When I think of death it is a bright enough city

But, to write well it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers. Perhaps they are the only teachers. I would go so far as to say that, if one must make a choice between reading or taking part in a workshop, one should read.

We grew into that perilous place: we grew fond.

Everyone now and again wonders about those questions that have no ready answers: first cause, God's existence, what happens when the curtain goes down and nothing stops it, not kissing, not going to the mall, not the Super Bowl. Wild roses, I said to them one morning. Do you have the answers? And if you do, would you tell me? The roses laughed softly. Forgive us, they said. But as you can see, we are just now entirely busy being roses.

The labor of writing poems, of working with thought and emotion in the encasement (or is it the wings?) of language, is strange to nature, for we are first of all creatures of motion.

And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

and also I am the leaves and the blossoms, and, like them, I am full of delight, and shaking.

About God, how could he give up his secrets and still be God?

When I have to die, I would like to die on a day of rain— long rain, slow rain, the kind you think will never end.

To understand many things you must reach out of your own condition.

Friend, I am becoming desperate. What shall I do? How quickly, if I only knew by what remedy, I would turn from the commotion of my own life. While on and on an on, the sparrow sings.

This is the earnest work. Each of us is given only so many mornings to do it— to look around and love the oily fur of our lives, the hoof and the grass-stained muzzle.

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 in mirth. It is in 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.