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A review by savaging
Why I Wake Early: New Poems by Mary Oliver
3.0
When Mary Oliver becomes unbearable to me I imagine two things:
1) That the revolution has already happened, and ALL of us are free to roam New England shorelines and write about pebbles and birds without thinking of the war and horror and exploitation happening elsewhere.
2) Even still, deep down Mary Oliver is ruminating, desperately, panicked, over cancer and parasites and gangrene, and she writes only words of beauty and happiness because that counter-balances her muddling soul.
Two leaps of the imagination, but how else am I supposed to get through poetry as cheery and faithful as this? Though all the same there are some bits delicious all on their own, like this ending of the poem about the whelk egg casing ("Something"):
"The egg case of the whelk
sits on my shelf in front of, as it happens, Blake.
Sometimes I dream
that everything in the world is here, in my room,
in a great closet, named and orderly,
and I am here too, in front of it,
hardly able to see for the flash and the brightness--
and sometimes I am that madcap person clapping my hands and singing;
and sometimes I am that quiet person down on my knees."
1) That the revolution has already happened, and ALL of us are free to roam New England shorelines and write about pebbles and birds without thinking of the war and horror and exploitation happening elsewhere.
2) Even still, deep down Mary Oliver is ruminating, desperately, panicked, over cancer and parasites and gangrene, and she writes only words of beauty and happiness because that counter-balances her muddling soul.
Two leaps of the imagination, but how else am I supposed to get through poetry as cheery and faithful as this? Though all the same there are some bits delicious all on their own, like this ending of the poem about the whelk egg casing ("Something"):
"The egg case of the whelk
sits on my shelf in front of, as it happens, Blake.
Sometimes I dream
that everything in the world is here, in my room,
in a great closet, named and orderly,
and I am here too, in front of it,
hardly able to see for the flash and the brightness--
and sometimes I am that madcap person clapping my hands and singing;
and sometimes I am that quiet person down on my knees."