Mary Oliver Quotes - Page 10

I went to India and was quite taken with it. There's a feeling there that things are holy first and useful second. And in America, we have it backwards.

I have trouble with some books because I'm so much in agreement with them I'd rather just sit in the grass myself.

The challenge is to keep up with all the new poets at the same time I love the old ones.

One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear.

In my own work, I usually revise through forty or fifty drafts of a poem before I begin to feel content with it.

... to write well it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers.

Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want to be there. It is not even a walk we take together.

All my life I have been restless-- I have felt there is something more wonderful than gloss-- than wholeness-- than staying at home.

Life is much the same when it's going well-- resonant and unremarkable. But who, not under disaster's seal, can understand what life is like when it begins to crumble?

To find a new word that is accurate and different, you have to be alert for it.

I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded.

I've always wanted to write poems and nothing else.

Like Magellan, let us find our islands To die in, far from home, from anywhere Familiar. Let us risk the wildest places, Lest we go down in comfort, and despair.

My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work.

Far off in the red mangroves an alligator has heaved himself onto a hummock of grass and lies there, studying his poems.

The poet dreams of the classroom I dreamed I stood up in class And I said aloud: Teacher, Why is algebra important? Sit down, he said. Then I dreamed I stood up And I said: Teacher, I’m weary of the turkeys That we have to draw every fall. May I draw a fox instead? Sit down, he said. Then I dreamed I stood up once more and said: Teacher, My heart is falling asleep And it wants to wake up. It needs to be outside. Sit down, he said.

The three ingredients of poetry: the mystery of the universe, spiritual curiosity, the energy of language.

Poetry is one of the original arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.

Every spring I hear the thrush singing in the glowing woods he is only passing through. His voice is deep, then he lifts it until it seems to fall from the sky. I am thrilled. I am grateful. Then, by the end of morning, he's gone, nothing but silence out of the tree where he rested for a night. And this I find acceptable. Not enough is a poor life. But too much is, well, too much. Imagine Verdi or Mahler every day, all day. It would exhaust anyone.

Language is, in other words, not necessary, but voluntary. If it were necessary, it would have stayed simple; it would not agitate our hearts with ever-present loveliness and ever-cresting ambiguity; it would not dream, on its long white bones, of turning into song.

...Sometimes I dream that everything in the world is here, in my room, in a great closet, named and orderly, and I am here too, in front of it, hardly able to see for the flash and the brightness- and sometimes I am that madcap person clapping my hands and singing; and sometimes I am that quiet person down on my knees.

Do you cherish your humble and silky life?

I try to be good but sometimes a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be. It's impossible not to remember wild an want it back.

All culture developed as some wild, raw creature strived to live better and longer.

The language of the poem is the language of particulars.