And finally, the Mary Oliver post

The first time I was fortunate enough to see Mary Oliver read at UCLA was a couple of years ago. When I received an email from UCLA Live and saw her listed, I went online immediately and snapped up three tickets. Flanked by POM and my sister, we “mmm-ed” with the rest of the surprisingly sensitive L.A. audience every time she read a line that punched our collective gut or poked our collective heart or strummed our collective soul. We listened attentively despite the ungodly loud hearing aid whine another nearby attendee was obliviously projecting. Mary Oliver was signing books afterward, and I happily waited in a line that moved more quickly than the lines for most Disneyland rides, and had her sign my copy of Thirst. (I had two other books for POM and my sister to get signed, since they didn’t have any of her books themselves.) As she signed, I babbled my semi-planned oration of thanks…thanks for allowing her work to be used on the AP Lang exam about a decade ago, because that is how I discovered her, thanks for her amazing poetry…but with an emphasis on babble. I think I was so excited and nervous to be there in front of her, and I talked too fast and stammered over my words. She just blinked at me.

We hear that lightning rarely strikes the same place twice. Imagine my excitement when, upon receiving the email catalog for UCLA Live’s newest season, I saw Mary Oliver listed again, complete with the same photo of her and her dog, Percy. Yoink – I immediately ordered! When I saw my tickets were in a row with double letters, I assumed we’d be sitting way in the back or off on the right wing, much as we had done the first time. Imagine my surprise when we reached Royce Hall and made our way to our seats, only to find that we were sitting in the fifth row from the front, just to the right of center. Wow! What an unexpected gift. I could actually see her face after she sloped onto the stage!

The first ten minutes of the reading were marred by the fact that we had hit traffic on the way, were still in the parking lot line at the time the reading was supposed to begin, and had run like mad fools to get there. Fortunately, they delayed the start by about fifteen minutes, so we didn’t miss any of the good stuff; but because we had hoofed it so quickly, my lungs protested vehemently, and I was struck with an evil coughing fit. Usually coughing is partly mind over matter, but not this time. It about made me cry to try to hold these paroxysms at bay. I was just about to get up, leave, go get a drink of water, and miss precious pearls of poetry and wisdom, when the lady in front of me handed me a cough drop. She was my salvation! It worked, and the rest of the reading was blessedly silent. (I felt bad, first for ruining several poems for that poor lady, and second because she and her party left after the reading but before the Q&A, which Mary always does at a reading, so I did not get the opportunity to both thank her and apologize. Wherever you are, kind lady, danke und es tut mir leid!)

I always take notes at these kinds of things. It’s a habit hard-wired into me. (My mom and dad used to make me take sermon notes every Sunday, from about the time I could hold a pen and write complete sentences. It sounds a little uptight, but I’m actually quite grateful, because it made me into a kickass note-taker! Without using much shorthand, I can take notes that practically read like transcripts. Very useful for master’s classes and poetry readings!) I at least wanted to have a record of the poems she read, so I could go back and reread them more leisurely at home, and I also wanted to take down her pearls of wisdom and moments of humor. Mary Oliver is VERY funny! She has a wry way about her, inserting gently self-deprecating non sequiturs into her transitions between poems. I’ll share my notes and memories with minimal commentary of my own; her own words are enough.

As she got set up, she shared with us that her dog had eaten her watch, and then she amended to note that it was actually her dog’s friend that had eaten her watch. First she read “Wild Geese,” which she called “an oldie.” Then, announcing that she intended to make her dog famous, she launched into “Percy” – the “wise little dog” who had the insight to eat a copy of the Bhagavad Gita. She moved on to “The Swan,” but as she looked up which page it was on, she noted that she was really looking at geese, but she’d just written a wild geese poem, “so I fancied it up a bit.” That got a small howl of laughter. She read three prose poems whose titles I did not catch, and then she shared “Beans” – virtue over intelligence! On to “Blue Iris” -- “And my heart panics not to be, as I long to be,/ the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle.” “The Word” was next, followed by “Percy 2.” As she looked up the next poem, switching through books, checking the indexes for page numbers, she quipped, “This is nothing; sometimes I spill the water.” Another appreciative peal of laughter.

She was going to read “Red” from Red Bird next…but she had to skip it because she didn’t bring the book. So she read from Leaf in the Cloud a poem in 12 parts. (I believe the poem was “Flare;” it’s her autobiographical poem.) Some phrases that stand out: “smelled…of the patience of animals;” “moth – not a drop of self-pity;” “my mother was the wisteria;” “Did you know that?;” “poem isn’t even the first page of the world.”

From Thirst, she read “Gethsemane,” first stopping to explain briefly about Jesus and the disciples sleeping. Then she read one of my own favorites, “When I Am Among the Trees.” In between this and the next poem, she remarked that it has been a crazy year for her. First she had a concussion, then she broke her wrist, then she broke her arm...“so I wrote very short poems,” most of which were four lines long. Following this explanation, she read “Yellow” and then “Violets” from Evidence, and then “The Journey.”

She said one of the most moving comments she has received was in an article in the New Yorker. It was about a woman working with young women from the Masai tribe, and in the article it was noted that one of the young Masai women asked, “Is Mary Oliver Masai?” She found that particularly special.

From What Do We Know?, she read “Mink” – “I paused so often to be glad, to be grateful.” On then to “At the Pond” and “Percy Speaks While I Am Doing Taxes,” which is hilarious and probably one of my newest favorites. Percy is her “beautiful, money-deaf gift of the world.”

“Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches [of Other Lives]” – “Listen, are you breathing/just a little/and calling it a life?” (This is one I recall from the first reading, and this time, as then, the entire audience audibly caught its breath and took one straight to the heart.)

“Mockingbirds” was next, particularly poignant for me, if only because I was just finishing teaching To Kill a Mockingbird to my sophomores, and also because Mr. Arthur, our local resident mocker, had just recently returned to build a nest and sing his heart out.

From White Pine, she read “I Found a Dead Fox,” which I do not recall having heard/read before, though it could just be a function of my occasionally leaky memory. It was upon hearing this poem that I made the note, “She’s a mystic, a hermit.” I’ve always been aware that she’s somewhat reclusive and certainly attuned to the mysteries of the world, but I mean that she seems to fit the definition of a religious mystic, a monastic hermit. She watched the fox in the wheel well of a truck shell, and it was dead, and then the fox was gone, and she lay where the fox had lain and watched the world from that vantage until the stars came out.

She said, “I like to ask questions in my poems,” and she went on to read “Some Questions You Might Ask.”

Before reading “Truro Bear,” she gave us a little history. She has lived in Provincetown for 40 years. Truro is the smaller town next to it. A while back, there had begun the rumor of a bear in the Truro woods, which would have been a very rare, very special, very odd thing. But the rumor persisted, and word spread, and everyone knew someone who knew someone who had seen the bear. In town, she ran into her friend, John, who had been ill of late and so she had not seen him. She began to tell him about the news of the bear, and John said he’d started that rumor just to amuse himself! “Too late,” she said. “I’d already written the poem.” And then she read “Truro Bear” – “When has happiness required evidence?”

She went on to discuss her particular choice of syntax. In doctor waiting rooms, she had watched people reading magazines. She noticed that people would read the article, but when they got to a poem, they would read two lines and turn the page. So she writes poems that are 36 lines but one sentence! She announced “The Sun,” before which she noted, “You have to hold on to the syntax here. You can do a lot with dashes.” Much laughter.

She read “The Summer Day.” As she was looking up “Peonies” in the index, she noted, “I’m very bad at titles.” And then she proceeded to read a short list of her titles, most of which had geese or swan or pond in them; they were a little basic. Then she said, tantalizing us, that she does have one poem with a long title, but it’s not published yet. It’s entitled, “The Poet Is Asked to Fill Up More Pages.” She said, “I don’t think they’ll like it…which may be the point.” I can’t wait for the new one, whenever it comes!

She then announced that she would finish up with two more, and then she was going to be tested to see what she knows (referring to the Q&A). She read “White Heron Rises Over Black Water” and then finished with “Little Dog’s Rhapsody in the Night,” which was adorable and beautiful. She switched her glasses then, and paid graceful thanks to the applauding audience.

The audience questions were pre-selected from notecards submitted before the reading began. (They must have given them out before I arrived.) I’ll bullet point her responses:

• Her writer influences have been Rumi, Hafez, Whitman, Emerson, Shelley, Wordsworth. “Fall in love with poems, and that’s how you start.”
• Her inspiration for “Journey” – oh yeah, I think that’s the title of her autobiographical poem that I could not remember earlier – “The poet should be a good reporter; sometimes you don’t even know it’s your own story.” “It was not a house that could accommodate me sufficiently. So I left.”
• How do you know when it’s done? “I don’t choose perfection. I choose does it work. I’m lucky that I overwrite” because there’s a lot of cutting. She often cuts off the first stanza. As spare as possible. “Do the best that you can; you have to move on to the next one.” She said you can tell at different readings, some poems are received more than others.
• She rereads her poetry quite a bit. “I’ve got to be faithful to them all. There are some I don’t, though.”
• “I started to write poetry because I read poetry.” It was in the 50’s in Ohio, a pastoral setting. She was a thoughtful, shy child (who broke the truant record at her school!). She would hear it and she would want to make it (music, poems). “I decided when I was 13. I wanted to do it, and wanted to do it well, and just kept at it.”
• “Start off by reading. If you want to write, make yourself a schedule. The work of responding to the world – it’s there, but it has to have a partner who’s reliable. If you write when you feel like it, it won’t happen. Make an appointment.”
• “You don’t have to think you’re a poet. We’re all poets. We all have language.” She went on to talk about when she used to teach or do workshops (she taught for 9 years; she wrote her handbook so she wouldn’t have to teach anymore J), she would at least save her students that warm up; she talked about the kind of warm ups people who want to write poetry often do. They close the door and wait to transform into a poet. She at least was able to save them that warm up.
• When asked why poetry more than prose, she replied, “Aptitude.” She writes essays; she wants to write more. But “poetry is my love. I like the sparseness. I would like to find a three-word poem.”
• She advises, “Do the thinking, not on the page. Otherwise it begins to sound like a lecture.”
• When asked about schooling in conventional forms, she made me happy by getting opinionated. “All institutions are modeling themselves on the airport. Do it and don’t question it.” “The program in school is ‘let’s make everyone alike.’” “We need technology, but we need artists, too. [Much applause.]” “Every child is a wonder.” She discussed teaching poetry in school classrooms and noted that the “upper grades got more and more still. They’d been turned into the product.” “I’m not a great fan of schools. I don’t even like buildings. [Much laughter and applause.]” “You can’t make a poet; you can help them improve.” “The whole point of being in school is ‘try this, try that.’”
• When asked whether there is a secret ingredient in poetry, she replied, “There’s a secret ingredient in everything, or at least an ingredient that’s mysterious.” No wonder I love her!