My Favorite Poet is Dead

Already as I’m writing this, I’m understanding the morbidity attached to it. Sorry. In a way, fitting with the month of February, this is a piece about love.

My favorite poet, Mary Oliver, is dead. I find myself, even still a few days later, rather gutted at the thought.

This does not fall into the category of earth-shattering news. This is not one of those famous deaths where the world watched, gathered around their television sets waiting with baited breath to hear the news. People will remember where they were for JFK, Princess Di, and Michael Jackson. People will not remember where they were for Mary Oliver. I’m sure that I will.

I sat having a latte in a cafe in Edinburgh–where I am currently studying–scrolling aimlessly on my phone before I walked to campus for my classes. I recognized a poem someone posted to their Twitter page, it was a poem I’d read a number of times. I opened the photo and read it again, thinking that this was a nice way to begin my day. Maybe I should make a point of reading poetry in the morning instead of looking to social media. I tucked that thought away in my mind and continued to scroll. Another day, I thought.

It was then, having read Mary Oliver’s words just moments ago, allowing myself just a second to relive my old dreams of being a poet from high school creative writing class, that I then read the headline. Mary Oliver is dead.

She was not young. She was not in good health. She was not someone who I knew personally. I cannot quite explain why it hurt so badly. Maybe I am just sensitive. Maybe I just didn’t want the world to lose a voice that had meant so much to me.

When I was 16, writing about the natural world fascinated me to no end. When we’d be given Thoreau and Emerson to read in school, I rejoiced. Whitman fascinated me to no end. Poetry about being alone spoke to me. I think I craved it, being alone on purpose instead of feeling alone in a room full of people. When Mary Oliver fell into my lap, I fell in love. As I read more of her work, I became more and more fascinated with her life. She’d walk around carrying a tiny notebook with her. She would write in the moments when she felt ready to write. It was not forced. Her work was criticized for promoting close relationships with women, which she learned to intertwine with nature in her work as a means of expression that could also be hidden. She’d break my heart and build me up all over again.

I turned to Mary Oliver’s nature pieces for solace sometimes, especially when things would get hard. Her work inspired much of my own, using nature in pieces to express my emotion. Her work carried me through a lot. I wish there was something that I could do for her. Writing this, in the cafe where I learned of her death, does not feel like enough.

I gave the new age tribute, which felt dirty in a way but somehow right at the same time. I posted the poem I read that morning, just before I heard the news, to my Instagram story. If even one person read it out of the hundreds who had “viewed” it, that would feel good. I’ll share my favorite bit:

“But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,

to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly;

for example – I think this

as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch –

the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the

daisies for the field.”

I hope there are daisies wherever you’ve gone, Mary. Thank you for your words. I’m glad that we’ll have them forever, even if we don’t still have you.

Featured image: Rachel Giese Brown in “Mary Oliver” Poetry Foundation