When was the last time you sat in the woods and did nothing?
For some of you, the answer may be: "It’s been a long time since I was a child." For others, maybe all you’re familiar with are sturdy walls and concrete places, so recalling such a time is alien. Others, who’ve made their home and their lives around nature, may reply "yesterday" or "today"—and if you were to ask Mary Oliver this question, she would probably respond similarly.
Mary Oliver's poetry book Dreamwork centers around her love of nature and the connection she feels within it. Through the backdrop of nature, Mary Oliver unravels...
Artistry and Craft
For those unfamiliar with Mary Oliver's style of poetry, the abruptness and her use of unconventional poetic implements can throw one off, as it did me at first. I was used to simplistic schemes and basic mechanisms of poetry, but instead, Mary Oliver uses vivid imagery, metaphor, and personification to express the human qualities within nature and relate them to the human experience as a form of poetry, which was unique.
Nevertheless, it was a bit difficult to get into at first, as—unlike other writers who have pages of prose to set the stage and paint the world around them—Mary, as a poet who focuses on short individual poems, had only a couple of paragraphs at best. This may have been a limitation because of the style and form of writing she chose to employ, but there was nonetheless resistance to getting into the world of Mary Oliver.★★★★
Themes and Messages
Gemini sa
Throughout the number of poems in Dreamwork, Mary Oliver explores the human experience. A couple of my favourites, besides Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese," are "The Wave" and "The Moths," specifically how they handle the human experience of death and uncertainty, and tie them back to humanity and the collective struggle of the human experience. I found those two to not only be the most poignant in terms of vivid imagery, but also the ones that carry the most eerie whimsy, where I feel Mary Oliver shines her brightest. I found that I had a harder time connecting with the majority of the rest of her works, excluding a handful, but overall, it was a unique experience.★★★
The Moths
There's a kind of white moth, I don't know
what kind, that glimmers, it does,
In the daylight,
in mid-May
in the forest, just
As the pink moccasin flowers
Are rising.
If you notice anything,
it leads you to notice
more
and more
And anyway
I was so full of energy.
I was always running around, looking
At this and that.
If I stopped
the pain
was unbearable.
If I stopped and thought, maybe
the world
can't be saved,
the pain
was unbearable.
Finally, I had noticed enough.
All around me in the forest
the white moths floated.
How long do they live, fluttering
in and out of the shadows?
You aren't much, I said
one day to my reflection
in a green pond,
and grinned.
The wings of the moths catch the sunlight.
and burn
so brightly.
At night, sometimes,
They slip between the pink lobes
Of the moccasins flowers and lie there until dawn,
Motionless
In those dark halls of honey.
The Waves
The sea
isn't a place
but a fact, and
a mystery
under its green and black
cobbled coat that never
stops moving.
When death
happens on land, on some
hairpin piece of road,
we crawl past,
imagining
over and over that moment
of disaster. After the storm
the other boats didn't
hesitate—they spun out
from the rickety pier, the men
bent to the nets or turning
the weedy winches,
Surely the sea
is the most beautiful fact
in our universe, but
you won't find a fisherman who will say so;
what they say is,
See you later.
Gulls white as angels scream
as they float in the sun
just off the sterns;
everything is here
that you could ever imagine.
And the bones
of the drowned fisherman
are returned, half a year later,
in the glittering,
laden nets.
Final Thoughts
This was one of my first exposures to a book of poetry as an adult. I recently picked it up after doing an in-depth essay on one of the poems, "Wild Geese," for a school assignment. I had read similar children's poetry or books with rhyme schemes as well as individual poems, but this was truly a different and new experience in many ways. To get lost, not within a storyline to see others and myself better, but instead within pages of poetry, was a unique experience, and I recommend this book to not only introspective lovers of nature but also those wanting to experience what it is to love and wonder at nature. That being said, the poetry book was a bit difficult to get into at first, and I felt like some poems were too abstract to be understood without doing research into them whcih made for an unnatural feel at some points within the book. I give this collection three and a half stars out of five.
Content Discretion:
The poems explore the pain of the world and the reality of death, Anger, Uncertinty and other such human experiences.
That's all folks! If you enjoyed the review, feel free to share it and/or leave a comment below. I'd love to hear your perspective! ❤❤
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