The Uncarved Blog

In her poem, Sometimes (pt 4 of 7), Mary Oliver teaches us how to live a life — especially as a poet — in 3 short, powerful sentences.

4.

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

“Sometimes” by Mary Oliver from Red Bird. © Beacon Press, 2008.

Mary Oliver exemplified this essential message in her poem, Mindful.

Everyday
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for —
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world —
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant —
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these —
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

“Mindful” by Mary Oliver from Why I Wake Early. © Beacon Press, 2005.

Another example of this theme is in this earlier post: Mary Oliver’s poem, Praying, is a lesson on attention, receptivity, listening and writing.

She did tell Krista Tippett in a long interview for The On Being Podcast that “I got saved by poetry, and I got saved by the beauty of the world.”

See this remembrance of Mary Oliver (1935-2019) and her astonishing poetry, with links to articles, interviews, and readings, as well as more of her favorite poems I’ve loved and posted over the years.

^{— Written and compiled (citing sources) by Ken Chawkin for The Uncarved Blog.}

Related: In Billy Collins, The Art of Poetry No. 83, The Paris Review Issue 159, Fall 2001, editor George Plimpton asked him what makes a poet. Collins summarized his four attributes of a poet: attentiveness, a love of language, a sense of gratitude for being alive, and laziness. For more on that interview, see the second part of this post where Plimpton asks Collins how he starts to write a poem: Billy Collins discusses the value of getting to the end of a poem and what can happen afterwards.

Tags: being astonished, elevating the ordinary, living a life, looking and listening, loving nature, Mary Oliver, paying attention, writing poetry

This entry was posted on January 15, 2024 at 10:51 pm and is filed under Mary Oliver, Other poems, Poetry, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.