Quotes from Mary Oliver

You broke the cage and flew.

almost every poem in the universe moves too slowly.

You don't want to hear the story of my life, and anyway I don't want to tell it, I want to listen to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

Make sure there is nothing in the poem that would keep the reader from becoming the speaker of the poem.

Whatever you know about here it doesn't tell you

Writing is neither vibrant life nor docile artifact but a text that would put all its money on the hope of suggestion. Come with me into the field of sunflowers is a better line than anything you will find here, and the sunflowers themselves far more wonderful than any words about them.

The sky, after all, stops at nothing, so something has to be holding our bodies in its rich and timeless stables or else we would fly away

the black fox that lies down to sleep beneath you, the moon staring with her bone-white eye

Love is the one thing the heart craves and love is the one thing you can't steal.

In looking for poems and poets, don't dwell on the boundaries of style, or time, or even of countries and cultures. Think of yourself rather as one member of a single, recognizable tribe. Expect to understand poems of other eras and other cultures. Expect to feel intimate with the distant voice. The differences you will find between then and now are interesting. They are not profound. (p. 11)

Miles below in the cold woods, with the mouse and the owl, with the clearness of water sheeted and hidden, with the reason for the wind forever a secret, he descends and sits with me, his voice like the snapping of bones.

I went to China, I went to Prague; I died, and was born in the spring; I found you, and loved you, again.

Give me that dark moment; I will carry it everywhere like a mouthful of rain. — Mary Oliver, from "Pen and Paper and a Breath of Air: Excerpts," Blue Pastures . (Mariner Books; 1 edition November 10, 1995)

People do it, some out of desperation, others out of greed. They steal. The very powerful and clever might steal a whole house, or a million dollars. It's been done. But what does it matter? Love is the one thing the heart craves and love is the one thing you can't steal.

we are each other's destiny

Wherever I am, the world comes after me. It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it. Now I understand why the old poets of China went so far and high into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.

In the act of writing the poem, I am obedient, and submissive. Insofar as one can, I put aside ego and vanity, and even intention. I listen. What I hear is almost a voice, almost a language. It is a second ocean, rising, singing into one's ear, or deep inside the ears, whispering in the recesses where one is less oneself than a part of some single indivisible community.

I have refused to live locked in the orderly house of reasons and proofs.

else the responsibility for your life.

Discussing free verse if like talking about an iceberg, a shining object that is mostly underwater.

Thus the great ones (my great ones, who may not be the same as your great ones) have taught me -- to observe with passion, to think with patience, to live always care-ingly.

Wherever I've lived my room and soon the entire house is filled with books; poems, stories, histories, prayers of all kinds stand up gracefully or are heaped on shelves, on the floor, on the bed. Strangers old and new offering their words bountifully and thoughtfully, lifting my heart. But, wait! I've made a mistake! how could these makers of so many books that have given so much to my life—how could they possibly be strangers?

and easily she adored every blossom, not in the serious, careful way that we choose this blossom or that blossom— the way we praise or don't praise— the way we love or don't love— but the way we long to be— that happy in the heaven of earth— that wild, that loving.

And then the stars stepped forth and help up their appointed fires- that hot, hard watchman of the night.