Quote

And over one more set of hills, along the sea, the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness and are giving it back to the world. If I had another life I would want to spend it all on some unstinting happiness.

Mary Oliver

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Mary Oliver
Age: 83 †
Born: 1935
Born: September 10
Died: 2019
Died: January 17
Climate Activist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Maple Heights
Ohio
Mary Jane Oliver
Last
Hills
Another
Rose
Back
Sea
Giving
Flower
Would
Spend
Roses
Life
Along
Sweetness
World
Lasts
Factories
Happiness
Opened

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The language of the poem is the language of particulars.
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The poem in which the reader does not feel himself or herself a participant is a lecture, listened to from an uncomfortable chair, in a stuffy room, inside a building.
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You must not ever stop being whimsical.
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All eternity is in the moment.
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There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you're working a few hours a day and you've got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you're okay.
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I have a notebook with me all the time, and I begin scribbling a few words. When things are going well, the walk does not get anywhere I finally just stop and write.
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People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.
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I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.
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Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?
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Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
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At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled after a night of rain. I dip my cupped hands. I drink a long time. It tastes like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold into my body, waking the bones. I hear them deep inside me, whispering oh what is that beautiful thing that just happened?
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Walks work for me. I enter some arena that is neither conscious or unconscious.
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And now I understand something so frightening &wonderful- how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar.
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Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response.
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How heron comes It is a negligence of the mind not to notice how at dusk heron comes to the pond and stands there in his death robes, perfect servant of the system, hungry, his eyes full of attention, his wings pure light
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We do not love anything more deeply than we love a story.
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Don't we all die someday and someday comes all too soon? What will you do with your own wild, glorious chance at this thing we call life.
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I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded.
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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.
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We shake with joy, we shake with grief. What a time they have, these two housed as they are in the same body.
Mary Oliver