American poet Mary Oliver (1935-2019)
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 it is 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.
Mary Oliver from New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, 1992
When I read this Mary Oliver poem on CBC Radio’s cross-country Morningside program in honour of CBC broadcaster Peter Gzowski after his death in 2002 I was told later that Mary Oliver’s books had sold out across the country that day. And that demand for the poem was so great CBC posted it on their website. Did all her books sell out? Really? Whether or not they did the point was made: this poem had struck home. Like so many of Oliver’s iconic poems – The Journey, The Summer Day, Wild Geese and many more.
When American poet Mary Oliver died today at age eight-three an argument could be made that the U.S. had lost its most popular and best-selling contemporary poet. Again, true or not, point made. Oliver was an extraordinary force in English-speaking poetry. And in the words of former editor of Poetry, Christian Wiman, at the time of an event about fifteen years ago: the most famous poet in America. And she won two of the most prestigious prizes for American poetry, The Pulitzer (American Primitive, 1983) and the National Book Award (New and Selected Poems, 1992).
And I feature When Death Comes on the day of Oliver’s death as the best way to celebrate this important American poet. A poet whose poems I have cherished for years. And a poet, I think, who embodied all she aspires to in this poem. If death is a door then Oliver for sure walked through full of curiosity. The same curiosity she shows in all her poems. The way she paid such attention to her world. And I would say to her: Mary, for sure, you did not simply visit this world, you were one of its great residents!
All this praise from me not withstanding this does not mean Oliver was universally loved particularly within the upper echelons of the American poetry establishment. There she was often publicly disdained and derided. Dismissed as a “nature poet”. But take a deeper look. Her poem Tecumseh (on American native leader and warrior, Tecumseh,) and her poem on Dachau and Mengle (1945-1985: Poem for the Anniversary) and her poem Rage (on her father’s abuse of her) and many others.
A good example of the critical derision of Oliver is is this excerpt from American poet and critic William Logan in his book review in the New Criterion in 2008.
Mary Oliver is the poet laureate of the self-help biz and the human potential movement. She has stripped down the poetry in Red Bird until it is nothing but a naked set of values: that the human spirit is indomitable, that the animal spirit is indomitable, that she loves birds very much, that she loves flowers very much, that even her dog loves flowers very much. . . . If we trust the landscape of her poems, Oliver lives in a vast nature preserve she polices like a docent, strolling from bush to bush from beast to beast (I’m told the wildlife of Cape Cod have asked for a restraining order against her).
Logan is noted for his snarky and downright mean reviews. This is one of those for sure. And for sure Oliver’s poems can sound preachy at times, and at times feel prosy. Where’s the lift off, the lyric ah ha? But also for sure there are countless poems of hers like The Journey that can be read a hundred times as I have read it (literally) and still retain its emotional punch, its lyric immediacy. My bet: Oliver’s poems will still be celebrated long after Logan is long forgotten. And that’s not to say he isn’t a fine poet. He is. But Oliver in my opinion has that something extra.
This discrepancy of opinion about Oliver was beautifully expressed in a 2018 book of essay’s: He Held Radical Light by the critically acclaimed American poet Christian Wiman whom I quoted above. He is now a professor at the Yale Divinity School and previously the editor of Poetry, easily the most influential poetry publication in the U.S.
Wiman was not a fan of Oliver when as his first official event as editor of Poetry he had to introduce her at large public reading. A few years earlier he had written a scathing review for Poetry which had been rejected. But in the hours before the reading that all changed when he read this poem:
WHITE OWL FLIES INTO AND OUT OF THE FIELD
Coming down
out of the freezing sky
with its depths of light,
like an angel,
or a buddha with wings,
it was beautiful,
and accurate,
striking the snow and whatever was there
with a force that left the imprint
of the tips of its wings—
five feet apart—and the grabbing
thrust of its feet,
and the indentation of what had been running
through the white valleys
of the snow—
and then it rose, gracefully,
and flew back to the frozen marshes
to lurk there,
like a little lighthouse,
in the blue shadows—
so I thought:
maybe death
isn’t darkness, after all,
but so much light wrapping itself around us—
as soft as feathers—
that we are instantly weary
of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes,
not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river
that is without the least dapple or shadow–
that is nothing but light—scalding, aortal light—
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.
Mary Oliver from Devotions – The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, Penguin Press, 2017.
Here is Wiman:
What I had objected to in my review of her most recent book was a certain transactional element in her relationship with the natural world. The poet goes out for a walk and gets a daily dose of awe, as if nature were an epiphany machine. It ought to be harder than this, I had thought to myself. And then, as I worked my way backward through all her work, it suddenly was: a poem midway through American Primitive [Wiman is mistaken: from The House of Light, 1990] about an eerie owl striking some hapless and never-named creature. It was spare and unsparing, wholly alert and disquietingly narcotic at the same time. I read it over and over. I practically had it memorized by the time I left the office promptly at five, a clerk of verse, and with the deathless prose of my first official introduction tucked carefully in my coat pocket, headed out to meet the most famous poet in the country.
There is so much in this poem of Oliver’s to celebrate. The chill I get when I read: It was beautiful and accurate…Ouch. Nothing sentimental, nothing romantic. And also what seems to be a reference to When Death Comes when she says: so I thought:/ maybe death isn’t darkness, after all,/ but so much light wrapping itself around us…
For Mary, I hope that the end of this poem, White Owl….is what happened to her when death took her today. I hope she was washed in light right out of her bones:
so I thought:
maybe death isn’t darkness, after all,
but so much light wrapping itself around us—
as soft as feathers—
that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking,
and shut our eyes, not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow,
that is nothing but light—scalding, aortal light—
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.