I suppose the first poems, or fragments of poems, I ever loved were found in the lyrics of cheesy, fantastical power metal songs. Bands like Blind Guardian, Hammerfall, and Stratovarius that, completely uninhibited, sung grandiose songs about sorcery and dragons with the conviction only a friendless nerdy child can appreciate. One of those bands, Iron Maiden, had a song inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 1798 narrative poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" which included some direct quotes.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath, nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
These were the first lines of "proper" poetry I ever fell in love with, and they instilled a lifelong fascination with poems. In high school, I became enamored with Charles Bukowski, as so many high school boys before me had. In hindsight, I didn't really appreciate his poetry, just the novelty of such tough, gritty writing full of profanity about alcoholism and prostitution being in a medium that usually isn't associated with those sorts of things.
Once that novelty wore off, I shifted my gaze to Billy Collins. A modern, accessible, self-referential and genuinely funny poet, he also shifted my perspective of what poetry could be. Collins often wrote poetry about poems and other poets and through him I came to discover Lawrence Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind, an absolute wonderland of a book. Nothing before or since has sparked my imagination quite like this collection.
From there, I had a series of favorite poets. Seamus Heaney and his ascetic religiosity and tender love for Ireland and its history. Elizabeth Bishop and her razor-sharp reflections on loss and home ("One Art" to this day is my favorite poem of all time). Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Dorothy Parker. All of them, other than Heaney, American and relatively modern, for whatever reason. I do love the classic English poets and their dedication to form but I suppose I'm biased, what with me personally being modern and American and all.
However, these last few weeks I've been absolutely floored by Mary Oliver in a way I don't think I ever have before. Never have I encountered poems filled with such a profound love and respect for nature, such evocative lines that are so simple and blunt they're legitimately shocking at times. She's made my jaw physically drop and forced me to put down her book and just stare off into the distance for a few minutes.
I grew up deeply religious and sheltered and I moved away from the church when I was twenty years old or so. It left a deep hole in me that took me a few years to figure out how to fill. I did figure it out though, and I filled it with a love and respect for nature and time. The immutable natural web the world weaves independent of any human influence. Wandering through the Mojave and finding obsidian arrowheads next to a ground squirrel burrow. I can't explain it, but Mary Oliver can. She puts into words so perfectly the thing I found to replace God. Take this, for example, from a poem called "October":
Sometimes in late summer I won't touch anything, not
the flowers, not the blackberries
brimming in the thickets; I won't drink
from the pond; I won't name the birds or the trees;
I won't whisper my own name.
One morning
the fox came down the hill, glittering and confident,
and didn't see me ― and I thought:
so this is the world.
I'm not in it.
It is beautiful.
This may seem nihilistic or cynical or pessimistic to some people. The idea that what makes the world beautiful is that it operates in such wondrous harmony independently of you and I. But what is the difference between that and God? Other than the fact that one can be experienced just by walking out your door and the other can't. It is such an unbelievable privilege to be able to witness the fox, the trees, the butterfly. Again, Mary Oliver puts it better than I could ever. From "Winter":
and the wind still poundingOr, from "The Summer Day":
and the sea still streaming in like a mother wild with gifts —
in this world I am as rich
as I need to be.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
I'm going to have to spend more time trying to put into words why Mary Oliver is just absolutely wrecking me right now. She just speaks to the part of me that longs for something sacred and she's able to find it in coyotes and snails and grass and in "the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight." I'm sure there will be a follow-up to this. For now though I'll sign off with another quote from "October".
What does the world
mean to you if you can't trust it
to go on shining when you're
not there?