Remembering Mary Oliver

BirdNote^®

Remembering Mary Oliver

Written by Mark Bramhill

MM: This is BirdNote.

[MUSIC ENTER]

On January 17th, 2019, renowned American poet Mary Oliver passed away. She was known for her beautiful writing about the natural world. We spoke with poet Traci Brimhall and asked Traci to read one of her favorite of Mary Oliver’s poems:

TB: Wild Geese: 

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.

She wrote with a reader she might love in mind and I sort of feel that with this poem. I feel sort of consoled by it. Every time I read it.  Somehow specific and seen and yet so open that a lot of people could see themselves in this poem.

MM: Learn more at BirdNote.org. I'm Mary McCann.

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Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Recorded by Gregory Budney.
BirdNote’s theme music composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
Producer: John Kessler; Managing Producer: Jason Saul; Editor: Ashley Ahearn; Associate Producer: Ellen Blackstone; Assistant Producer: Mark Bramhill.
© 2019 BirdNote   April 2019   Narrator: Mary McCann
 
ID# oliverm-01-2019-04-22    oliverm-01