Response 7: Blue Iris

Mary Oliver writes about nature one flower or tree or (dare I say it) weed at a time. Her approach is close-up and species-specific. In this way she reminded me a little bit of Nancy Gift. Within a given poem, there is not exactly a strong sense of the environment surrounding the plant life she focuses on. Oliver sets her poems in fields, dunes, swamps and rivers, among others, but these are not as specific as Ray’s longleaf pine forest or Abbey’s Arches National Monument or Lamberton’s desert. In general Oliver does not mention a specific state or geographic region or even country in her poems. Taken together though, the plant life and environments she evokes in this collection of poems create a larger sense of place, one that is lacking in any individual poem by itself. Still, the places she describes are not that specific. They feel vaguely like the northeastern United States, but she doesn’t hammer home the particular location like many other nature writers do. I wondered if this was in order to give her poems more of a universal resonance.

I also wondered about how this relates to activism, and whether her poems can be considered activist. The only time she mentions a state specifically in Blue Iris is in “A Blessing,” the essay about summers spent with a friend in a state park near Clarion, and even then she doesn’t name the park itself. It is also in this essay that she most closely approaches a show-us-the-destruction kind of activism. “A Blessing” contains a gut-wrenching encounter with a strip-mine. Her other poems exhibit a different kind of activism I think, the kind that celebrates the pleasures of cut flowers in a vase or a walk in the woods rather than highlighting human destruction. Oliver’s poems aren’t outright accusatory, but they contain conservationist undercurrents. She often addresses her poems to "you" and thus implicates her readers, asking them to consider the content of her poems on a personal level.

Oliver says in “Upstream”: “the sunflowers themselves [are] far more wonderful than any words written about them.” This quote reveals an essential tension within her work: her awareness of the inadequacy of poetry (and language) to capture the natural world. She seems torn between throwing off worldly concerns to enjoy nature and listening to “ambition”: “And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists / of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money, / I don’t even want to come in out of the rain” (5). Perhaps “to sell my life for money” refers to the endeavor of poetry and her identity as poet. If so then the paradox is that she does come in out of the rain; that she does write her poems and sell her life for money.

Of all the poems in this collection, “The Oak Tree at the Entrance to Blackwater Pond” resonated with me most. This poem had a stronger sense of place than most others; I felt that I could use this poem as a map and find the exact tree it described, recognizing it as well as the feelings it inspired. This poem concerned a deeply-felt connection with one particular tree rather than a whole species. I couldn’t attach myself to many of her other poems because they often felt too general. Also, sometimes they seemed too optimistic and happy and didn’t resonate with me as much. This one is darker; not so accepting. In this poem, Oliver allows herself to mourn, to be “...tired of that brazen promise: / death and resurrection.” The affirmation she often finds in the cycle of death and rebirth is questioned; it fails to comfort.

I appreciated “The Oak Tree…” because it increased the specialness of the tree it is about, giving it dimension and meaning and heart. In Blue Iris, it was rare for Oliver to bring in anything not of the natural world and I found the use of Osiris to be so refreshing. Osiris served as a lovely metaphor for the oak tree, for death and rebirth and their complexities. I saw him on his dark boat in my imagination and felt the longing in that image. This poem also seemed to be shaped like a tree: the centered type created an effect like a trunk.

Reading Mary Oliver made me think about the first poem I wrote, which was about daffodils, one specific flower, like her poems in that way. The first spring flowers in my mother's garden were crocuses and daffodils. The crocuses were small and fragile and often froze mid-bloom, but the daffodils bloomed hearty and abundant, one of my mother's favorites. All of my early poems were about the natural world. Thinking about that, I wrote the following poem. Hadn't written a poem in a long time, years and years. I guess this is called "First Poem":

I took out the poem now but if you'd like to read it just let me know :)