Among the Trees:
The Devotions of Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver teaches us to listen for the voice that speaks from the silence. She is always on the lookout for this silence, attentive to the mysterious voice that may break through, half-heard along the wind, beneath the water, or behind the sun.
Mary Oliver (1935-2019) was an American poet beloved for her sincere verse and natural spirituality. She embodied what Wordsworth called, in My Heart Leaps Up! (1802), a ‘natural piety’. Her poetry often takes on a devotional character, with verses seeming to spring forth out of an overflow of love and curiosity for this life and world. I always come away from her work with a renewed appreciation of the earth, and of the pure gift of our human consciousness that allows us to witness it. I have recently been reading her personal selection of poetry, Devotions, which she left us before her passing. Below I will share a few of her poems, providing some brief thoughts and analysis along the way.
Praying (2006)
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.
A silence in which another voice may speak. Oliver is always on the lookout for this silence, attentive to the mysterious voice that may break through, half-heard along the wind, beneath the water, or behind the sun. The poet, Lisa Ampleman, in her America Magazine tribute to Mary Oliver, wrote that in some moments, ‘I need a poem that will help me pray’, and that her poetry helped with that. Oliver’s point in this poem is that the beginning of prayer—that spontaneous outpouring of gratitude unique to human beings—need not rely upon our witnessing a magnificent natural sight, such as the Blue Iris flower that Oliver often meditates upon. Instead, prayer can start with just ‘a few small stones’.
All we have to do is ‘pay attention,’ and notice. To train this kind of poetic seeing, here connected with the universal human act of prayer, is so central to what I consider to be a main theme of this Substack, and of my social media, ‘coffee_with_keats’. So many of us labouring, as Hamlet says, under the grunt and sweat of a weary life, yearn for the recovery of an enchantment and brightness that our world seems to have lost. We are like Wordsworth in his sonnet, The World is too Much with Us (1802): ‘Little we see in Nature that is ours! / We have given our hearts away’. While Oliver did not identify herself with any religion in particular (although she attended an Episcopal Church), it is easy to see a kind of theism or pantheism at work. She felt deeply the presence of God in nature, and was especially sensitive to the rhythms and echoes of the voice which speaks out of the earth. What have those lonely mountains worth revealing? asked Emily Brontë in her poem, No Coward Soul is Mine (1846); and in many ways, Mary Oliver’s life and letters were devoted to answering this question.
Wild Geese (1986)
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting– over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
I first heard this poem in an undergraduate class on the Poetic Imagination, recited aloud by the Australian poet, Anthony Lawrence. It was also was my first acquaintance with Mary Oliver’s work. I still remember the deep sense of relief I felt upon hearing it. But there was also a certain conflict that arose within myself. I don’t have to be good? But I want to be good. And so on. But these uneasy feelings melted away when I realised that Oliver’s poem is not so much in opposition towards being a good person as such, but rather against a kind of paralysing moral anxiety or scrupulosity, the feeling that we are never good enough, that we can never be perfect, that we can never please others enough, that we don’t deserve love and contentment in the here and now.
Oliver’s point, it seems to me, is that this message of self-interrogation, of internalised self-hatred, does not come from the earth or from nature. It comes from other human beings, and we can therefore choose whether or not we ought to listen. In many ways, of course, this poem reads as a response to certain traditional schools of Christian theology, ones that emphasise sin and fallenness to a perhaps exaggerated degree. And while I believe that there is a certain wisdom to be found in the aforementioned theologies (even in the doctrine of Original Sin) which highlight our innate tendency to fall short in many ways, I believe that Oliver’s critique lands on something solid. You do not have to be good, you do not have to spend time on your knees, repenting, feeling remorseful over your flesh for no other reason than that it is your flesh. The soft animal of the body will love what it loves. And, what’s more, the world will help you along. The final lines offer us a grace-filled hand so customary of Oliver’s work: the world offers itself to your imagination […] calls to you […] harsh and exciting. She reminds us that no matter how lonely we may feel, we do indeed have a place ‘in the family of things’, a home amidst ‘the prairies and the deep trees, / the mountains and the rivers.’
When I am Among the Trees (2006)
When I am among the trees, especially the willows and the honey locust, equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness. I would almost say that they save me, and daily. I am so distant from the hope of myself, in which I have goodness, and discernment, and never hurry through the world but walk slowly, and bow often. Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, “Stay awhile.” The light flows from their branches. And they call again, “It's simple,” they say, “and you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.”
When I read this poem, I think of Emily Dickinson’s The Bee is Not Afraid of Me:
The Bee is not afraid of me. I know the Butterfly. The pretty people in the Woods Receive me cordially— The Brooks laugh louder when I come— The Breezes madder play; Wherefore mine eye thy silver mists, Wherefore, Oh Summer's Day?
There is the same sense of contentedness amidst nature, of simple joy and gentleness, a pure distillation of the Wordsworthian ‘natural piety’ mentioned above. Neither Mary Oliver nor Emily Dickinson see this reliance upon, and intimacy with, nature as a weakness, somehow a diminishment of their self-sufficiency. Instead, their stay among the trees and brooks is presented as a mutual giving, a kind of special understanding present between the body and the world: I will look out for you, and you for me. Any serenity that Oliver may feel in these restorative moments comes as a result of sheer generosity. It is a gift. I wonder how often each of us has been ‘saved’ by the trees, or by an ocean expanse, or by the otherworldly echoes of seabirds flying over sand dunes. How many of us have been saved by the subtle change in mood which comes when the sun slants in a special way along the riverbank; when a single wisp of cloud wanders slowly over our backyard, disappearing into mountain ranges.
Among the trees, Mary Oliver is saved “daily”. She reminds us that, although there are times when we falter along the way, the same earth from which we were born comes to console us and give us new strength. Perhaps the trees alone cannot solve our problems or inadequacies, but Oliver teaches us that they can give us a renewed hope and encouragement, sometimes just enough to make it through to the other side of the river.
Wonderfully done. A joy each week and a road back and forward to more joyful times—more inciteful things.
Your writing and analysis are exceptional. I enjoyed reading this very much. I do live among very old tree!