The culprit: "Mary Oliver"
One or America's best loved poets was driving traffic to my site. Visitors were finding my blog because of the few lines of Mary's poetry. Oh the indignity.
I read more about her and read more of her poetry and began to understand the love affair the poetry reading world continues to have with her work.
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. [...]
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.
From "Wild Geese"; Dream Work (1986)
Interesting Bits:
- Her fifth collection of poetry, American Primitive, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984.
- She fell for her partner of 40 years, hook line and sinker, love at first sight style: Molly Malone Cook, who would become literary agent and live with Mary in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
- She attended two colleges, Ohio State University and Vassar College, but did not receive a degree at either one.
A Thousand Mornings
New And Selected Poems
Thirst:Poems
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