It’s mid-February, and the events of this year so far have not inspired much optimism. Diversity, equity and inclusion programs are being slashed, hundreds of people have lost their homes to fires and members of our communities are living in fear of having their families separated. It recently snowed eight inches in New Orleans, where I grew up. While it was fun to see pictures of my friends experiencing snow for the first time, there’s an apocalyptic undertone to the fact that there was more snow in New Orleans this January than in Ithaca. It has been feeling difficult to find anything purely joyful lately.
One exception to this lack of joy is a book I recently picked up from Odyssey Bookstore entitled Devotions. This is a collection of Mary Oliver’s poems, which she arranged shortly before her death in 2019. Mary Oliver was an American poet who wrote mainly about the wonders of the natural world. She won several awards throughout her career including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. I’ve been slowly making my way through the 442-page book, which spans the entirety of published work, dreading when I will eventually finish.
She uses simple, approachable language and says exactly what she means. Some poetry is a challenge to decipher, but Oliver’s reads almost like a set of fables, with clear adages that will come to mind next time you find yourself under a tree or next to a creek. Her delicate, beautiful style makes me excited to put the book down and go outside, even when it’s seven degrees and blizzarding.
Reading poetry isn’t for everyone, but saying you don’t like poetry is like saying you don’t like movies. Poetry is an extremely broad category which I believe contains something for everyone if they search for it. I’m now a strong advocate for starting with Mary Oliver.
It’s difficult to choose one of the hundreds of poems in the book that might convince you to give it a try, but the following lines of “To begin with, the sweet grass” are emblematic of Oliver’s style:
“Eat bread and understand comfort.
Drink water, and understand delight.
Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets
are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds
who are drinking the sweetness, who are
thrillingly gluttonous. ...
Look, and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.
It’s more than bones.
It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It’s more than the beating of the single heart.
It’s praising.
It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life– just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe
still another.”
In this poem, she injects importance into the mundane. Bread and water are about as simple a form of nourishment as it gets, but Oliver sees something bigger at work. Her words are delightfully specific and, at the same time, as large-scale as they can be. She seamlessly zooms her scope in and out, from a flower or a bird to the joy of living. She moves slowly through her descriptions, undermining the fast pace of daily life which can prevent us from enjoying the smaller details.
It would be insensitive to claim that reading a book of poems will solve the real, serious struggles that we, as individuals and as a country, may be experiencing, but it certainly can’t hurt. I won’t attempt to speak for everyone, but I feel confident claiming that the fear of losing control over what’s going on in the world is spreading. Gratitude, wherever we can find it, and intimate appreciation for the miracles of our planet, are a rebellion against this powerlessness. I may not be able to counteract executive orders or extinguish wildfires, but Oliver’s acute awareness of how the human and the natural worlds interact has helped ground me in what I can control: how I interact with my immediate surroundings. Oliver’s gentleness and poignancy inspire me to open my eyes and appreciate the world around me. It doesn’t matter how you say it: Stop and smell the roses or go touch grass.
Oliver focuses on simple pleasures like a stream, the way her dog, Percy, turns over on his stomach and wild blueberries in the forest in a way that could be helpful in soothing existential anxiety. As Cornell students, we sometimes forget how lucky we are to pass waterfalls on our way to class and to be surrounded by natural beauty. Reading Oliver’s poems feels like a necessary glimpse at something larger, which tells us to stay hopeful and not forget how beautiful the world is.
Rachel Cannata is a senior in the Hotel School. She can be reached at rcannata@cornellsun.com.
