Blue Horses (2014)
Mary Oliver (1935-2019)
79 pages
Mary Oliver’s poetry fairly radiates with her profound love for, and connection to, the natural world. The wonder she communicates provokes in me a nearly irresistible urge to immediately head out the door and deep into the nearest wood or field – to experience again that same wonder for myself.
And so it is with her collection Blue Horses. In these poems, Oliver captures not only the beauty she discovered during her many sojourns in the wild, but also what she learned from observing nature about how to live life more fully.
For Oliver, each part of the natural world – the animate and the inanimate – amazes, both individually and in their role as part of the whole. Through her writing, she not only expresses her awe at all she sees but also, as in the poem Good Morning, wonders how others could fail to be similarly moved by such an abundance of delights.
The multiplicity of forms! The hummingbird,
the fox, the raven, the sparrow hawk, the
otter, the dragonfly, the water lily! And
on and on. It must be a great disappointment
to God if we are not dazzled at least ten
times a day. (22)
In that same poem, she mentions “the notebook that I always carry in / my pocket. / And the pen,” with which she records as she walks not just the stunning “multiplicity of forms,” but also the smallest of details in what she sees. In The Vulture’s Wings, for example, she thrills to a stunning contrast that occurs as a vulture soars above, the top of its wings
black death
color but
the underwings
as sunlight
flushes into
the feathers
are bright
are swamped
with light. (45)
Here the word “swamped” completely changes the scene, transforming a brief flash of light into a moment that dazzles, thrills. And as a consequence, in her description the vulture sheds the pejorative image often associated with it.
Beyond such beauty, Oliver also discovers in nature inspiration for how to live her own life. This can be a general attitude, “Stay young, always, in the theater of your / mind,” (21) or a broader realization of how to be at peace with both minor nuisances and mortal challenges.
In that latter sense, she finds each element of nature to have its role, its place in the larger scheme of the world. In Stebbin’s Gulch, she describes a cascading stream,
it’s only industry
to descend
and to be beautiful
while it does so;
as for purpose
there is none,
it is simply
one of those gorgeous things
that was made
to do what it does perfectly
and to last,
as almost nothing does,
almost forever.
Here again, one phrase – as almost nothing does – transforms a lovely description of a natural scene into a transcendent realization about the fleeting nature of life and the futility of too constant and obsessive a focus on purpose.
Oliver puts a finer point on the transience, interconnectedness, and ultimate contingency of life in Owl Poem, in which she notes that animals do not ask the food that they take whether it wished to live, before she goes on to acknowledge that “Acceptance of the world requires / that I bow even to you, / Master of the night.” These lines carry added poignance, given that in a poem a few pages earlier in the collection she writes that, like a hunter, “cancer / entered the forest of my body, / without a sound.”
In other poems in this collection, Oliver also takes a more personal line. In one she touches on a sudden and surprising blooming of love late in life; in another, she describes, obliquely, the difficulties she faced at home as a child, something she also recalled in an interview with Krista Tippet for the On Being podcast. She seemingly references this painful period in the poem Loneliness, then notes
Oh, mother earth,
your comfort is great, your arms never withhold.
It has saved my life to know this. (51)
These lines reflect her comments in the On Being interview that tie her love of nature back to a need to escape what she could not control, and to somehow find peace by immersing herself in the natural world, fully and unreservedly.
Even for readers not burdened by the emotional toll that Oliver seems to have lived through, her message that nature’s “comfort is great” offers reason enough to venture out into and connect more deeply with the natural world. Her poems in Blue Horses tempt readers with reminders of the vast “multiplicity of forms” of beauty that await.
Other notes and information:
I will admit that I pulled this book off the shelf at the bookstore (shout out to the Crazy Wisdom Bookstore!) based on seeing Oliver’s name on the spine, but was then instantly sold by the gorgeous cover, with its Franz Marc painting, Turm der blauen Pferde (Tower of Blue Horses). The painting features in one of the poems in the book.
Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf
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