When I read Mary Oliver’s collection of poetry and essays, Blue Iris, I felt as if I was walking through the forest with her, or along the beach, and stopping to look at all the flowers and trees and animals that we happen across. Her approach to writing nature poems, it seems, is a coveted ritual in which she takes a walk through the forest, sees something beautiful, and then spends the rest of the walk musing over that experience. You can feel the rhythm of her walking in many of the poems she writes; in “Morning Glories,” “The Sunflowers,” and “Goldenrod,” the stanzas are separated to even look like she is climbing somewhere. They are short, breathy lines, and you feel like she is writing them as she walks, perhaps back to her house after having seen the sunflowers in the field.
She has a deep connection with a natural world that resonates in her poetry, making her work unique and identifiable. Many of her poems are in the first person, and reflect on her physical interactions with the plants and the trees. Toward the end of the book, she focuses on mortality, often thinking about death as she lies in the grass. In “White Flowers,” she reminded me a lot of Emily Dickinson, when she writes, “Never in my life / had I felt myself so near / that porous line / where my own body was done with / and the roots and the stems and the flowers / began” (51.)
One of my favorite poems was “Some Questions You Might Ask” because it addresses a subject matter I think about a lot, and she addresses it in the same delicate way she does with all her poems.
Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of an owl?
Who has it, and who doesn't?
I keep looking around me.
The face of the moose is as sad
as the face of Jesus.
The swan opens her white wings slowly.
In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
One question leads to another.
Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
Like the eye of a hummingbird?
Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
Why should I have it, and not the anteater
who loves her children?
Why should I have it, and not the camel?
Come to think of it, what about maple trees?
What about the blue iris?
What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?
What about the grass?
This poem is so beautiful to me because it finds a way to approach a topic that is so difficult to address. Questions are the only way we can talk about animals’ souls and whether or not creatures besides humans feel. Oliver’s imagery is graceful, subtle, yet so suggestive. “The swan opens her white wings slowly.” The majority of the poem is questions, because as I said, we can only ask questions. What is the soul? Who has it? What right do we have to say that animals don’t have it? “Why should I have it, and not the anteater?” Oliver doesn’t answer the questions. She can’t. But the only lines that aren’t questions in the poem suggest to the reader, without threatening, that we need to think beyond what we know. “I keep looking around me. / The face of the moose is as sad / as the face of Jesus.” “The swan opens her white wings slowly.” “In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.” Oliver discovers something in the actions of these animals, their intricate movements, their love. How can we say that they don’t have a soul? If it is human compassion that we are using as an excuse to distinguish ourselves from other species, then should that not be all the more reason to look for similarities between us? At the end of the poem, she extends the question to everything on the earth – the stones, the leaves, the lemons. This poem is about selflessness, about respect. It’s ok to form opinions, to decide what you think has a soul and what doesn’t. But first, isn’t it important to ask these questions? Isn’t it your responsibility to ask these questions, to really think about it?
Oliver’s poetry is relaxing in its transcendental quality. When reading it, I feel detached from society, wholly immersed in her setting, the forest, the walks she takes, her mind. She is distinct from society when she is in this element. She frees the raccoon from the trap and then runs like the raccoon, touching the touch-me-nots. “oh, life flew around us, everywhere.” When she recalls her younger years, camping in Ohio with her friend in “A Blessing,” she is separate from the strip-mined forests. She is of the first-growth forest. At Blackwater, she lies in the grass and becomes one with the earth, feeling the roots almost take hold of her. To read Mary Oliver is to participate in this relationship with nature. I could not help but feel a part of this connection when I walked with her through the forests of Blue Iris. It was tranquil, peaceful, delicate. I wanted to cry, almost, upon reading of the baby skunk. I think all of Oliver’s poems will echo with me for a long while. In my mind, her footsteps patting lightly on leaves are a comforting and familiar sound.
Lovely, close reading of Oliver. I'm so happy that you took a moment to mention the structure of her poems, the "steps" that look as if they are going somewhere.
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering if you felt at all the absence of tension in these poems, or if there was enough tension in the way that she interacts with the flowers, almost as if they were human?
I agree that the question of where the soul resides is an important one. I hope we'll talk about this more tomorrow.