These writers were unafraid to be close to things I also longed to be close to: the natural world, the rich loam of a quiet inner life, Mystery itself.
I understand why it’s a little silly to feel like I knew them, or to experience their loss as personal somehow, but their writing offered an intimacy that felt like kinship. They were unafraid to be close to things I also longed to be close to: the natural world, the rich loam of a quiet inner life, Mystery itself.
When I read them, huddled under pooled lamplight in my dorm room bed, I was both witnessing and learning about what arises when we give our whole selves over to simply noticing and loving the world. I was responding to the writing, yes. But ultimately my response was much more visceral. It happened long before I even clocked the craft—the shimmering language, the rhythm, a wise insight, or a brilliant turn of phrase.
The poet David Whyte describes poetry as “language against which we have no defenses,” which I love. His description echoes Emily Dickinson’s metric: “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.”
A good poem bypasses our locked logical gates, our emotional armor, our heady explanations and analysis. One second you’re reading a line, the next you’re crying, and you’re not sure exactly how you got there.
What both of them are getting at is the part of poetic language that we can’t ever seem to lasso or control. A good poem bypasses our locked logical gates, our emotional armor, our heady explanations and analysis. One second you’re reading a line, the next you’re crying, and you’re not sure exactly how you got there.
I believe now that our visceral response is our felt sense of an artist’s rapt attention in the moment of observing, the moment of translating, the moment of creating. Their attention becomes a conduit for something that visits us and catches us right off guard. It leaves us feeling suddenly tumbled, rinsed and alive. We blink awake, smack in the middle of our own lives.
Simple ≠ Simplistic
Mary Oliver died in 2019, which now feels like an entire weary lifetime ago. She shuffled off her mortal coil in the Before Times: before COVID, before so many fully lost themselves in the narcotic swirl of social media, before we seemed to hop timelines and uncork this bizarre cultural fever dream.
She was, unlike most poets, widely read and widely adored. Especially after her Pulitzer win in 1984 and her National Book Award in 1992, she sold out venues, and her books were consistent bestsellers.
I understand that the reasons we like certain works of art are always subjective; I make no claim that everyone should love the same artists I love. But I did notice, when I attended writers’ workshops in my 20s, 30s, and 40s, that I often heard Serious Poets™ refer to Oliver’s broad appeal as “accessible.” As in: Oh yes, her poetry certainly is…accessible.
Sometimes, in secret, I felt ashamed to have been so moved by her work. Did this mean that I was not a real writer, but just (gasp) ordinary?
The disdainful sniff was implied, as if the primary mark of high-quality poetry is inscrutability. I never really understood that. Sometimes, in secret, I felt ashamed to have been so moved by her work. Did this mean that I was not a real writer, but just (gasp) ordinary?
Maybe this is why it felt particularly satisfying, when my husband and I sat down to to watch the recent PBS documentary on Oliver, Saved by the Beauty of the World, to hear her friends and colleagues offer this simple challenge to naysayers: “Okay, well, if it’s so easy to write this kind of poetry, why don’t you try it?”
Because of course, as any expert in anything will tell you, it takes a lot of practice to make something look easy. And Mary Oliver was, at her core, an expert at paying attention.
It’s Good For Us To Be Undone
Saved by the Beauty of the World opens with Stephen Colbert explaining that he sends “The Summer Day,” arguably Oliver’s most famous poem, to his kids every year on the first day of summer. It’s a sweet gesture, in the gentle, unassuming way Colbert is.
Then he reads the poem aloud. Or rather, he tries to. And he has to stop, because the tears well up and he can’t get through it. The film cuts so another poet finishing it for him.
How many times has Colbert read that poem? 100? 1,000?
My husband reads “Wild Geese” to his high school physics students every year, another well-worn familiar piece. Similarly, he has to work to get through it.
The words, so unadorned and plain, pick a lock and are burrowed inside the chest before these guys even have a chance to pretend to be unreachable.
I’ve led contemplative workshops using Oliver’s poems, where very successful men in business suits break down, much to their own shock. The words, so unadorned and plain, pick a lock and are burrowed inside the chest before these guys even have a chance to pretend to be unreachable.
Her words often articulate vulnerable questions and reach places that conversation, analysis, and self-help books can’t. For a person who wants to start a meditative practice, but who is struggling with the itchy discomfort of silence in a perpetually-noisy world and a fear that they’re never doing it “right”—what stills the hiss of perfectionism like 10 short lines?
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
That’s it! That’s the whole dang poem!
And yet, underneath it all, we feel the steady gaze of the questions: What scares you? Who are you performing for? What if it was okay for you to be ordinary?
Whatever the Fruit, Attention Is the Soil
Saved by the Beauty of the World is a beautiful film. It is by turns informative, funny, and heartfelt. Mary Oliver was beloved by people who knew her well. She was someone both famous and weirdly anonymous; she didn’t reveal much of her personal life and was most content as a solitary creature.
Mary Oliver’s job, as she saw it, was almost childlike in its simplicity: “Pay attention. / Be astonished. / Tell about it.”
Her devotion to her craft was singular, in a way that transcended platforms and ideological identity. The movie offers a tiny glimpse into a vast interior world: the violence and terror of her childhood, the way she escaped into nature but actually discovered her true home there, the way she couldn’t stop herself from spending each day in silence, awe, and presence.
Her job, as she saw it, was almost childlike in its simplicity: “Pay attention. / Be astonished. / Tell about it.”
And while many of us might know those lines, as well we should, it’s important to know, too, that they come wrapped in a context, after this confession: “Sometimes / melancholy leaves me breathless.”
Attention, awe, and astonishment…are not only about beauty and moments of beatific peace. They also come from witnessing the sorrow, brutality, confusion, and betrayal of the real world. That is the deal we make when we agree to pay attention. We will see, hear, and feel it all.
Attention, awe, and astonishment—the kind she says we must tell about—are not only about beauty and moments of beatific peace. They also come from witnessing the sorrow, brutality, confusion, and betrayal of the real world. That is the deal we make when we agree to pay attention. We will see, hear, and feel it all.
Yes, she was trying to tell us that the world is far more radiant, far more wondrous than we ever suspect—and she was right. But she was also trying to say that the world, which very much includes us, is worth loving whole, even when it feels swallowed in immense darkness.
The thing that struck me the most about Saved by the Beauty of the World, the thing I have been thinking about for weeks now, is that Mary Oliver happened to be a poet, but her primary and foundational vocation was to pay attention. I think we make a mistake in assuming that this kind of attention is only meant for famous poets, or monks, or people who have hours a day to spend wandering the woods.
I think we make a mistake in assuming that this kind of attention is only meant for famous poets, or monks, or people who have hours a day to spend wandering the woods.
In her lifetime, she might have chosen to be a dancer, or a painter, or a CPA. She happened to be a poet, and she answered that call with utter devotion, thank goodness. But her poems were the fruit of her attention.
Her call to us, harsh and exciting, seems to be the same: that we are here to pay attention. That willingness to show up, awake to the world—whether it’s in the woods, on the mat, in the meeting, stuck in traffic, tucked around our kids at bedtime, curled up in hope and grief for everything we’ve seen—attention is the original and shared vocation for each of us. When we devote ourselves to that, we also become conduits for wisdom, delight, and flourishing that we can’t predict or control.
Groundskeeper, lawyer, CEO, receptionist, designer, politician, caregiver—whatever the fruit of our work, attention is the soil. I think it’s meant for all of us, and now more than ever.
