WIST Quotations

Oliver, Mary -- “Evidence,” sec. 1, Evidence (2009)

Dave — Tue, 11 Feb 2020 16:38:54 +0000

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“Evidence,” sec. 1, Evidence (2009)
(Source)

Oliver, Mary -- “Evidence” (1), Evidence (2009)

Dave — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 23:33:12 +0000

I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“Evidence” (1), Evidence (2009)
(Source)

Oliver, Mary -- “Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?” West Wind (1997)

Dave — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 20:55:45 +0000

Listen, are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?” West Wind (1997)
(Source)

Oliver, Mary -- “In Blackwater Woods,” st. 7-9, American Primitive (1983)

Dave — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 22:50:19 +0000

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“In Blackwater Woods,” st. 7-9, American Primitive (1983)
(Source)

Originally published in Yankee Magazine.

Oliver, Mary -- “Invitation,” Red Bird: Poems (2008)

Dave — Sun, 09 Jun 2019 23:40:35 +0000

… believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing
just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in this broken world.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“Invitation,” Red Bird: Poems (2008)
(Source)

On goldfinches singing.

Oliver, Mary -- “Of Power and Time,” Blue Pastures (1995)

Dave — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 00:18:20 +0000

The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“Of Power and Time,” Blue Pastures (1995)
(Source)

Oliver, Mary -- “Poppies,” Blue Iris (2004)

Dave — Tue, 31 Mar 2020 19:53:33 +0000

But also I say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,
when it’s done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“Poppies,” Blue Iris (2004)
(Source)

Oliver, Mary -- “Robert Schumann,” Dream Work, Part 1 (1986)

Dave — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 15:15:12 +0000

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.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“Robert Schumann,” Dream Work, Part 1 (1986)
(Source)

Oliver, Mary -- “Robert Schumann,” ll. 7-11, Dream Work (1986)

Dave — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 15:18:40 +0000

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.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“Robert Schumann,” ll. 7-11, Dream Work (1986)
(Source)

Oliver, Mary -- “Sand Dabs, Five,” Winter Hours (1999)

Dave — Tue, 17 Mar 2020 23:09:33 +0000

You can have the other words — chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I’ll take grace. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’ll take it.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“Sand Dabs, Five,” Winter Hours (1999)
(Source)

Oliver, Mary -- “Sand Dabs, Six,” Winter Hours (1999)

Dave — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 15:50:50 +0000

Every word is a messenger. Some have wings; some are filled with fire; some are filled with death.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“Sand Dabs, Six,” Winter Hours (1999)
(Source)

See Howell (1659).

Oliver, Mary -- “Sand Dabs, Six,” Winter Hours (1999)

Dave — Tue, 21 Apr 2020 20:21:32 +0000

As a carpenter can make a gibbet as well as an altar, a writer can describe the world as trivial or exquisite, as material or as idea, as senseless or as purposeful. Words are wood.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“Sand Dabs, Six,” Winter Hours (1999)
(Source)

Oliver, Mary -- “Sometimes,” sec. 1, st. 2-3, Red Bird (2008)

Dave — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 18:36:51 +0000

I don’t know what God is.
I don’t know what death is.

But I believe they have between them
some fervent and necessary arrangement.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“Sometimes,” sec. 1, st. 2-3, Red Bird (2008)
(Source)

Oliver, Mary -- “Sometimes,” Sec. 4, Red Bird (2008)

Dave — Tue, 03 Mar 2020 21:43:09 +0000

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“Sometimes,” Sec. 4, Red Bird (2008)
(Source)

Oliver, Mary -- “Starlings in Winter”

Dave — Wed, 17 Apr 2019 02:24:17 +0000

I want
to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“Starlings in Winter”
(Source)

Oliver, Mary -- “The First Time Percy Came Back,” A Thousand Mornings (2012)

Dave — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 23:08:02 +0000

And now you’ll be telling stories
of my coming back
and they won’t be false, and they won’t be true,
but they’ll be real.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“The First Time Percy Came Back,” A Thousand Mornings (2012)
(Source)

Oliver, Mary -- “The Poet With His Face in His Hands,” New Yorker (4 Apr 2005)

Dave — Tue, 14 Apr 2020 19:37:47 +0000

You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn’t need any more of that sound.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“The Poet With His Face in His Hands,” New Yorker (4 Apr 2005)
(Source)

Collected in New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2 (2005), and The Best American Poetry, 2006.

Oliver, Mary -- “The Ponds,” House of Light (1990)

Dave — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 23:16:53 +0000

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled —
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“The Ponds,” House of Light (1990)
(Source)

Oliver, Mary -- “The Summer Day,” New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1 (1992)

Dave — Wed, 01 Nov 2017 16:12:37 +0000

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“The Summer Day,” New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1 (1992)

Oliver, Mary -- “Three Things to Remember”

Dave — Sat, 17 Aug 2019 04:28:26 +0000

As long as you’re dancing, you can break the rules.
Sometimes breaking the rules is just extending the rules.

Sometimes there are no rules.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“Three Things to Remember”
(Source)

Oliver, Mary -- “When Death Comes”

Dave — Mon, 28 Oct 2019 21:07:45 +0000

When it’s over I want to say: All my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“When Death Comes”
(Source)

Oliver, Mary -- “When Death Comes” New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2 (2005)

Dave — Tue, 07 Apr 2020 16:46:32 +0000

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“When Death Comes” New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2 (2005)

Oliver, Mary -- “Wild Geese,” Dream Work (1986)

Dave — Tue, 10 Mar 2020 16:17:35 +0000

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.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
“Wild Geese,” Dream Work (1986)
(Source)

Oliver, Mary -- Comments at Wellesley College (20 Oct 2010)

Dave — Tue, 25 Feb 2020 18:13:38 +0000

The universe could have been created ugly, and would have functioned. And yet there is beauty everywhere in creation. Beauty gives us an ache, to be worthy of that creation.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) American poet
Comments at Wellesley College (20 Oct 2010)
(Source)

The last phrase is frequently paraphrased, "We need beauty because it makes us ache to be worthy of it."