Today’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect
It’s hard to believe, because hardly a day has since passed when I have not reached for some work of hers, but I discovered Mary Oliver by chance as I was rifling through the “Used and slightly damaged” book bin at the Strand Bookstore. A copy of “American Primitive” with just its front cover page missing was among other treasures, and although I didn’t know Oliver, I did know and love Stanley Kunitz’s poetry, and this is what he had to say on the back cover blurb:
“Mary Oliver’s poetry is fine and deep; it reads like a blessing. Her special gift is to connect us with our sources in the natural world, its beauties and terrors and mysteries and consolations. American Primitive enchants me with the purity of its lyric voice, the knowing freshness of its perceptions, and the singular glow of a spiritual life brightening the pages.”
Memory tells me that the book fell open to this poem, but I think this is the way I have chosen to remember it:
In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver
Look, the trees are turning their own bodies
into pillars