My favorite poet passed away yesterday. And, from what I’ve seen on social media, Mary Oliver was the favorite poet of many, many people.
I don’t read a lot of poetry – except Shakespeare – but I do read Mary Oliver. She was accessible. She wrote beautifully, lyrically, but in a plain spoken way that resonated with her readers. She wrote of nature. She wrote of grief. She wrote of living a life of integrity, taking chances, being in the moment, looking around you. Seeing. Being. Becoming.
I first discovered her poems in the late eighties. My mentor at Boston University, who was a voice teacher, used them as teaching tools in his voice class. Each student was assigned one of her poems. Eventually, they had to interpret it. Speak it. Make the images come alive through their voices.
I quickly bought a volume of her poetry. And then another. And another.
Some of my Mary Oliver books – the white one on the left is a collection of her poems.
When I moved to San Diego and started teaching voice as well as speech and dialects, I did the same thing. I assigned Mary Oliver’s poems, especially her poems that told a story, to my students. For most of them, this assignment was their introduction to Mary Oliver.
I’ve had students write me in the years since thanking me for that introduction.
So when I heard that she had passed away yesterday, for an moment, I felt as if the breath had left my body.
Such a profound loss.
But what a life she led. I heard Krista Tippett interview her a few years back. She was all I thought she would be and more. More than any other writer, she seemed to tap into my soul. She seemed to understand how I felt about nature and animals and people and life. And she taught me to look even more closely at the world around me.
She was preceded in death by her longtime partner, photographer Molly Malone.
She leaves behind her words, her images, her wisdom. I’m so grateful for that.
But oh, how we’ll miss her.
Rest in Peace.
Happy Friday.
