Public Poetry Project: Mary Oliver 

Hi! Welcome to my Public Poetry Project. My name is Alex Barnell. I am a senior in Poetry class and for our class, we had to pick poems and write why we chose them. I chose to focus on poems by Mary Oliver. I hope you enjoy!

Wild Geese: 

I chose this poem because it puts me at ease. The calming reminder: “The world goes on” (7) helps put things into perspective. Additionally, the repetition of “meanwhile” points out the fact that nature will continue to do its thing no matter what I do. This poem is the only one out of the three to acknowledge the reader directly using “you” pronouns. I think this adds to the calming notion of the poem. 

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 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.

Hummingbirds 

We talked about this poem in class and I loved it. I appreciate how this poem feels like a personal anecdote. I also love the descriptive language because I felt transported to the scene which is hard to do in a poem because of the length. The end of the poem provided a shift back to the speaker. It fit with the storytelling nature of the poem and the speaker let us in on where their minds wandered to. The poem repeated the word “shimmering” both at the beginning of the poem and the end but to refer to different things. The first time, “shimmering” referred to the hummingbirds and the second time referred to the speaker’s questions. It made me wonder if the hummingbirds are also questions. 

The female, and two chicks,

each no bigger than my thumb,

scattered,

shimmering

in their pale-green dresses;

then they rose, tiny fireworks,

into the leaves

and hovered;

then they sat down,

each one with dainty, charcoal feet –

each one on a slender branch –

and looked at me.

I had meant no harm,

I had simply

climbed the tree

for something to do

on a summer day,

not knowing they were there,

ready to burst the ledges

of their mossy nest

and to fly, for the first time,

in their sea-green helmets,

with brisk, metallic tails –

each tulled wing,

with every dollop of flight,

drawing a perfect wheel

across the air.

Then, with a series of jerks,

they paused in front of me

and, dark-eyed, stared –

as though I were a flower –

and then,

like three tosses of silvery water,

they were gone.

Alone,

in the crown of the tree,

I went to China,

I went to Prague;

I died, and was born in the spring;

I found you, and loved you, again.

Later the darkness fell

and the solid moon

like a white pond rose.

But I wasn’t in any hurry.

Likely I visited all

the shimmering, heart-stabbing

questions without answers

before I climbed down.