Poetry Unplugged

Yesterday, I read a whole book of Mary Oliver poems in one sitting.  Which, given the potency of poetry, is the literary equivalent of, say, going through the Valentino's buffet line three or four times. Bad idea. Where on earth was I expected to tuck away all those jewels, each a rich slice of dessert resting neatly atop the other?

When it was all done, when I lay down the book, spent and dizzy, my brain distended from too much too much, I went back through it, immediately, to find the beautiful lines that already were leaving me.

"Every day I see or I hear something that more or less kills me with delight. . . "

There was a time in my life when I dismissed poetry as some obscure, froo-froo silliness produced by pinched people sitting lonely and alone in their dens, as raindrops lick the windows in front of them.

There was also a time in my life when I thought Space Food Sticks were delicious.

At 54, I've come to realize that poetry is like nuclear energy--its components too small to see and yet mysterious and powerful beyond comprehension.  Like a chicken stock that has been cooked down to almost nothing and now holds all the flavors of everything that has ever passed through it, poems don't require length to make their point.  Their strength is evidence of the poet's selectivity.

". . . as one who knows enough already or knows enough to be perfectly content not knowing. . . "

The not knowing?  That is my favorite part.  I just hadn't been old enough to realize it.

"I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down into the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields

which I have been doing all day.

Tell me what else should I have done?

Doesn't every thing die at last and too soon?

Tell me what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life."

   

 excerpted from The Summer Day by Mary Oliver