WHAT DO W E that poetry speak to the delicatest ear Oliver's garden includes the sea

KNOW of the mind; we're astonished to hear and its creatures, dunes abloom with
Oliver: "from my mouth to God's wildroses, meadows and forest, ponds
ear, I swear it; I want only to be a and streams-plenty with which to
Mary Oliver.
song." What Do We Know begins make new a nineteenth-century ro-
MA: Da Cap0 Press'
with quotations from Emerson: "the manticism. A strength of her poems
2002.
invisible and imponderable is the and a mark of their stature is the
sole fact"; and from Augustine: "my readiness with which they call to
THE LEAF AND THE mind is on fire to understand this mind the best of the past, onlv to
CLOUD most intricate riddle" (Augustine's remake it. Emily Dickinson's nar-
riddle concerns the nature of time). row fellow in the grass,
- who makes
Mary Oliver. These two statements form accurate her feel zero at the bone, is Oliver's
Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, enough parameters for the poems "Black Snake" who "looks shyly at
2002. which follow, with one exception; nothing and streams away into the
neither bespeaks the sense of hu- grass, his long body swaying like a
mour with which Oliver occasion- suddenly visible song."
B Y D E B O R A H JURDJEVIC ally approaches her task. In "The Oliver tempers Tennyson's criti-
Word," a prose piece in which she cism that nature is red in tooth and
imagines listeners already know the claw with Stevens' "death is the
So powerful is the image ofthe garden word is song in the forest, she writes: mother of beauty" to give us
in Andrew Marvell's poem of that "Beauty," a poem about an owl which
name that the mind of the poet I speak of the soul, and seven concludes:
himself is rendered as a "green people rise from their chairs
thought in a green shade." Roughly and This beast of a bird
a century and a half after Marvell, the leave the room, seven others with her thick breast
garden writ large enough to include lean forward to listen. I speak and her shimmering wings -
Swiss Alps and the English Lake of the body, whose nest, in the dark trees,
District seemed to William the spirit, the
Wordsworth a needed refuge - from a mocking bird, the hollyhock, is trimmed with screams and
world where getting and spending leaves opening in the rain. bones
lay waste to our powers. And music, faith, angels seen at dusk whose beak
Wordsworth's nature poetry often -and seven more people leave is the most terrible cup
showing us a solitary figure (a the room I will ever enter.
highland lass, a leech-gatherex, a and are seen running down the
friend, a sister) communing with road. Here is the Romantic sublime:
wind and weather in amoment which pure beauty, pure terror. Although
seems to be out of time was so Mary Oliver is, without apology, a Oliver has lived for sometime in
important to John Stuart Mill that full-blown Romantic. Keats wrote Provincetown, Massachusetts, she
hecredited itwith helping himclimb that "if a Sparrow come before my was born in Ohio and occasionally
his way out of a nervous breakdown. window I take part in its existence you hear the middle-west in intona-
Mary Oliver's poetry, written at and pick about the Gravel"; Oliver tion and diction. Speaking of the
the end of the last century and the in "One Hundredmite-sided Dol- non-human seascape and the absence
beginning of this one, reveals the phins on a Summer Day," writes: of language posing the problem of
created world as her garden and the the poem in "Mockingbird," Oliver
poet herselfas the solitary figure in it. .. . It is my sixty-third summer writes: "and nothing there anyway
She brings to her poems the sensu- on earth knew, what a word is." She changes
ous intensity and intelligence of and for a moment, I have almost the familiar "don't you know," in-
Marvell, the Romantic faith of vanished serted mid-sentence to "don't we
Wordsworth, the conviction of Mill into the body of the dolphin. know," implicating the reader and
that the soul is nourished by poetry. echoing her title. Indeed, we know
Much of Oliver's work is celebratory into the moon-eve of God, we need the poet for the word.
and uncommonly risky. We are in- into the white fan that lies at the In a lovely poem called "Grati-
clined to respect Dickinson's or bottom of the sea tude" she uses the questionlanswer
Frost's quarrel with God; we are less with everything structure of the o l d ~ n ~ l i ballads
sh
accustomed to astraightfonvard the- that ever was, or ever will be. (I'm thinking particularly of "The
ism. We may appreciate Stevens' wish Cutty Wren") to make a kind of

166 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME

summary catechism: "What did you row, and be green also, follows is her argument.
notice? ... What astonished you?" Like the diligent leaves. The penultimatesection, "Gravel,"
Her responses, a Whitman-like list marks the inevitable erosion of the
of the marvels of the natural world: The second section, "Work," is cobbled path, recognizes the certainty
"the tin music of the cricket's body;/ her love song to the wild world; the of death, and asks "are you afraid?"
the blouse of goldenrod," are all im- third, "From the Book of Time," The poet responds with question
personal except for one sequence, recalls Plato's notion of ideal beauty and answer-the question, "What
"What would you like to see again?" and then in haiku-like couplets does it mean, the world is beautiful1
She has written her big black dog, renders the ideal concrete. What does it mean?"
Luke, into several of her poems and and "This is the poem of good-
does so here: Even now bye,/ And this is the poem of I don't
I remember something know ... dirt, mud, stars, water - / I
my dog: her energy and exuber- know you as I know myself." In this
ance, her willingness, The way a flower sustained meditation, Oliver is pure
Her language beyond all nim- in a jar of water pantheist, insisting on the certainty
bleness of tongue, her of the thrush, the certainty of the
recklessness, her loyalty, her remembers it life poet's song. "Evening Star" intro-
sweetness, her in the perfect garden duces death as "snake"(by dropping
strong legs, her curled black lip, the article, she makes him pure sym-
her snap. The way a flower bol) on his relentless way toward the
in a jar of water mouse's hole. "It is easy," she writes,
It's a risky business, grieving in to praise God in nature -
poetry for a pet. Pablo Neruda has a remembers it life
brilliant poem on the loss of his dog, as a closed ...as ifyou were yourselfa flower
but I know ofno other poet ofstature seed .... in the field,
who has tried it. Oliver manages a the rain tossing you and tossing
careful poise between adjectives "Riprap" (the word for cobble- you,
which mark shared territory between stone laid on a mountain trail to
animal and human (the first seven prevent erosion) is the title of her until you are that flower
abstract adjectives) and those (in the fourth section and as such is a nod to as torn as muddy as golden as
final line) concrete and particular to Gary Snyder, who has claimed the that.
her own dog. "Gratitude" concludes word metaphorically for his method
with the reason for the series of ques- [Link]'s poem is care- Oliver's God partakes both of
tions in the first place: "so the gods fully constructed of interacting im- death and the creature that awaits it.
shake us from our sleep." ages-mussels on the sea rocks, the The tenth section begins "the first
The Leafand the Cloud, a powerful quickmind ofthe poet, the gratitude streak of light in the darkness, the
seven-part lyric poem addressing she feels for love - first bird to sing, ..." returning the
nature, beauty, work, love, and death, poem to its beginnings in "Flare."
begins with a quotation from I know what to hoard in my The eleventh asks the question: what
Ruskin's Modern Painters, defining heart more than the value of is it I need to know, opening the way
man's position mid-way between pearls and seeds, for her next volume of poetry, What
earth and the heavens. In the first There was the dayyou first spoke Do We Know, and in the haunting
section,"Flare," Oliver summons her my name - final stanza, the poet sings as though
childhood, assesses and dismisses it, beyond the selfand its questions, her
and then denies its existence: "any- culminating in the image ofawhite voice merely the alleluia discernable
way,/rhere was no barn,/no child in heron, landing at night over a salt in the beating wings of swans in
the barn,/no uncle no table no marsh, appearing , "Not herself but winter as they
kitchen,/only a long lovely field full the perfection of self,/a white fire."
of bobolinks," as though she had Only for a moment does the poet rise and fall
read Lao Tsu - "to forget what you perceive the bird as pure soul and as oh rise and fall
knew is best." Here is a poetry which out of time, but the moment holds through the raging flowers of
has clear designs upon us: the poem. snow.
In "Rhapsody," the short fifth sec-
Let grief be your sister, she will tion, the poet catches Time "by the From her mouth to God's ear;
whether or no, blue sleeve" and tells him he does not what a gift that we also can hear the
Rise up from the stump of sor- rule the field. The love song which song.

VOLUME 22, NUMBER 2