FINISHED READING - Dream Work by Mary Oliver

'And now I understand 
something so frightening, and wonderful -
how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing
through crossroads, sticking
like lint to the familiar.'
from the poem Robert Schumann

Mary Oliver's poetry has kept being introduced to my conscious awareness. She was referenced frequently, along with Kathleen Raine,in the Post-Jungian 'world soul' of Hillman etc at The London Convivium for Archetypal Studies in the late 1980's that I attended. Then much later on in the 'noughties' she appeared to have her moment of being the go to poet for artistic reflection in Triratna Buddhism, before that mantle was handed on to David Whyte. These days extracts from her work crop up regularly as posts on Facebook etc. 

'Sometimes what's wrong does not hurt at all, but rather
shines like a new moon.' 
from the poem Consequences

So I've had many an opportunity to read her poetry and mostly passed it by unconsidered. Don't ask me why, just not ready, not receptive enough yet. Her work undoubtedly is infused with subtler undertows than a casual glance will reveal. Its a bit like crossing a stream, so easy to walk across yet entirely miss the direction and purpose of its flow. So focused can we be on directing our own movement, we neglect what we feel, how we respond, as we walk our nature through nature. As Dogen once expressed it ' If we do not know the walking of the mountains, We do not yet know our own walking'. If there is no larger picture, destination overrides the universal as both our origin and destiny.

All night
the dark buds of dreams
open
richly.
In the centre
of every petal
is a letter,
and you imagine
if you could only remember
and string them all together
they would spell the answer.
from Dreams

Oliver's poetry in Dream Work, first published in 1986, repeatedly touches on an experience of an intimacy and closeness to nature and in particular to landscape. This simultaneously echoes in our humanity, pricks up our psychological ears, reminds us we are part of something that, spiritually speaking, is much greater than our little grey self. Threads of interconnectivity are left lying around in all her work to be lifted up, followed and treasured, or of course we could just walk on by actively intent on some goal or other 

'But who,
not under disaster's seal,
can understand what life is like
when it begins to crumble?'
from Storm in Massachusetts, September 1982.

One can easily forget the potency of the telling image, the resonances of a unique vision that reverberate through us, powered by our recognition of it. It is part of the oblique skill of the remarkable poet, to surprise us by jumping out from behind a concealed curtain unexpectedly. Rationality deliberately misdirected by a line of poetry, towards a deeper level of truth not entirely subservient to logic or the matter of fact. Mary Oliver's poetry can often do that, using the most ordinary of language and inference.

'You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
from Wild Geese

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8