This week’s Poetry Friday segment is a tribute to Mary Oliver. The beloved, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet died last week at the age of 83. In her honor, KNAU’s Gillian Ferris gathered some of Mary Oliver’s biggest fans to read their favorite poems.
Sheila Anders:
My name is Sheila Anders. I live here in Flagstaff and work in International Education at Northern Arizona University. The poem that I’m going to read today is Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese. The reason I chose this poem is it was actually offered to be read at our wedding. The words actually really, really struck me as absolutely perfect for any partnership starting out for a life together, especially the way it ends, which I’m very excited to be reading.
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.
Martin Johnson:
My name is Martin Johnson, and I was born, raised and live in San Diego, California. I was Gillian Ferris’ English teacher in high school, and it was a glorious time. I was so in love with teaching, so in love with literature, so in love with my students who were ready to be ignited and to see the world. And there was no one better to guide that passage than Mary Oliver. I would like to read her work, Mindful.
Everyday
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for —
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world —
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant —
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these —
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of glass?
Kristine Pavlik:
My name is Kristine Pavlik, and I have grown up in Flagstaff. I love Mary Oliver’s poetry. I feel like she has a gentle tenderness to the way she writes, but it still is full of impact, and intensity, and meaning. I’m going to be reading, Sleeping in the Forest.
I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as months
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in the water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
Poetry Friday is produced by KNAU's Gillian Ferris. If you have an idea for a segment, drop her an email at Gillian.Ferris@nau.edu.
