Mary Oliver was an American poet who has won a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prizer for poetry. A writer is not defined by their awards but it is still an impressive feat. I have also read her collection of poems that she curated herself, Devotions.
Upstream is a collection of essays where she reflects on how her love of nature shapes her writing and how some famous writers like Edgar Allen Poe or Thoreau have influenced her and what they themselves were influenced by. I do not usually read essays because they are very philosophical but this one was worth a read. It is also short. Mary Oliver just has a beautiful way with words. Even though this is not a book of poetry she has a very poetic way of writing that is a delight (even if she might disagree.)
Teach the children. We don’t matter so much, but the children do.
Attention is the beginning of devotion.
Give them the fields and the woods and the possibility of the world savaged from the lords of profit. Stand them in the stream, head them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent, beautiful blossoms.
A lot of the essays about her forays into nature and her observations of life through what she has observed. Nature was a big part of her being able to survive her childhood and it stayed with her throughout her life. You will want to be in nature and observe it with the kind of awe and humility and passion she does once you are finished reading.
And whoever thinks these are worthy, breathy words I am writing down is kind. Writing is neither vibrant life nor docile artifact but a text that would put all its money on the hope of suggestion. Come with me into the field of sunflowers is a better line than anything you will find here, and the sunflowers themselves far more wonderful than any words about them.
At the beginning of the book there are some essays where she ruminates on what creative people are like or what you should expect when you are a creative person which I find inspiring.
My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and however it may arrive. If I have a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all.
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 it neither power nor time.
Book It Babe 