American Primitive

Nature is the theme uniting this well-crafted, beautiful and majestic collection of poems from one of my favorite poets. Mary transcends the physical world by in essence being One with that world. Sometimes her ability to do that is disconcerting. While this was not my favorite collection of hers (poetry is felt on such a personal level) these are remarkable poems indeed. Notably

Moles, John Chapman, Tasting the Wild Grapes, The Honey Tree, A Meeting, Postcards from Flamingo, Vultures, An Old Whorehouse, Rain in Ohio, Skunk Cabbage, The Fish, Humpbacks, The Roses, Blackberries, In Blackwater Woods, The Plum Trees....

I could probably go on.....

But I especially loved First Snow. I'm always trying to capture (somehow) the feeling into show more words-of what feels like the experience of the feeling of snow, and more specifically the first snow of the season. And Ms. Oliver does it. Ah, thank you! It's something magical-the first snow!-and part of what makes me glad that I live in the North.

"The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles, nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain — not a single
answer has been found –
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one." show less

Mary Oliver won the Pulitzer Prize for this book of poetry, and it did not disappoint! Nobody writes about nature the way she does. I always see the world differently when I finish reading one of her poems.

There were so many good ones, but I especially loved the beginning of “Vultures”:

“Like large dark
lazy
butterflies they sweep over
the glades looking
for death
to eat it,
to make it vanish,
to make of it the miracle:
resurrection.”

I like the idea of poems about nature and wildlife, which Mary Oliver explores in this book of poetry. However, I found it very difficult to follow along on a lot of these poems. Often, just as I was beginning to enjoy or understand a poem, it seems that she would change the poem into something totally different and she would lose me. I just had a difficult time understanding where she was trying to go.

Oh, I was dazzled and delighted when this book won the Pulitzer; it is so rare for my favorites to do so. I love Mary Oliver's work, so sinewy and mystic, but with mud at the roots.

It's easy to see why Mary Oliver is a Pulitzer Prize winner. Her words on the simple pleasures of nature strike a beautiful, simplistic chord with the reader. The best poems aren't complex but rather simple. They point out what we already see around us. Mary Oliver just does this better than anyone else.

Anything by Mary Oliver gets 5 stars from me. She touches my soul like no other poet I have found. (But I'm willing to take suggestions!)

My favourite of Mary Oliver's poems ... Sensual, immediate, visceral ... Potent with summer imagery and tastes!