Just bought a collection of Mary Oliver's poetry. I love buying books of poetry -- makes me feel so decadent for some reason, more so than when buying a novel.

"Wild Geese"
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

sighhhhhhhh - oh to be able to write like her

I have a poem of hers sitting in my inbox that I've been meaning to post in my LJ.

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Oh yes, isn't that wonderful? It was in Writer's Almanac last week, right? I saved it in my inbox too. It's what prompted me to finally go buy an actual collection of her work.

This one I've got stuck to the back of my laptop:

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

It was in Writer's Almanac last week, right?

Yep. Nothing better than Garrisson Keillor reading poetry to you.

I've been inspired to change my tag.

Dana - speaking of, I adore yours. Where did it come from?

I was chatting with a friend about the trip to NY I'm taking. I'm doing a Broadway run, seeing Sondheim's Assassins, Avenue Q (which involves puppets), and The Boy From Oz (which involves Hugh Jackman singing and dancing in nicely tight pants).

On our way back from Avenue Q, my sister and I passed by the theatres where The Boy From Oz and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof are playing (right next door to each other). There is a review of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that praises the show's "pure, naked" direction posted on the outside wall of the theatre. We both noticed the words "pure, naked" next to the giant picture of Hugh Jackman and simultaneously gasped, before realizing that those words didn't mean what we'd assumed they did. t /pointless anecdote

Now that's doing Broadway right.

I love Oliver's poems, too. Here's my favorite:

Poppies
Mary Oliver

The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation
of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.

There isn't a place
in this world that doesn't
sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage
shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.

Of course nothing stops the cold,
black, curved blade
from hooking forward—
of course
loss is the great lesson.

But I also say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,
when it's done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.

Inside the bright fields,
touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight—

and what are you going to do—
what can you do
about it—
deep, blue night?