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There is a notion that creative people are absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social customs and obligations. It is, hopefully, true for they are in another world altogether.

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
Hopefully
Heedless
Notion
Obligations
Creative
Reckless
Social
Absent
Another
Altogether
True
Minded
World
Customs
People
Obligation

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You want to cry aloud for your mistakes. But to tell the truth the world doesn't need any more of that sound.
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Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
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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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I feel the terror of idleness, like a red thirst. Death isn't just an idea.
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You must not ever stop being whimsical.
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Poetry is a serious business literature is the apparatus through which the world tries to keep intact its important ideas and feelings.
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After a cruel childhood, one must reinvent oneself. Then reimagine the world.
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...whoever you are, not matter how lonely the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh & exciting - over & over announcing your place in the family of things.
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I GO DOWN TO THE SHORE I go down to the shore in the morning and depending on the hour the waves are rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable, what shall— what should I do? And the sea says in its lovely voice: Excuse me, I have work to do.
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The stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own.
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All night my heart makes its way however it can over the rough ground of uncertainties, but only until night meets and then is overwhelmed by morning, the light deepening, the wind easing and just waiting, as I too wait (and when have I ever been disappointed?) for redbird to sing
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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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The sea isn't a place but a fact, and a mystery.
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Wherever I am, the world comes after me. It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it. Now I understand why the old poets of China went so far and high into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.
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It's not a competition, it's a doorway.
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Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? / Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?
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Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable. I don't really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours. Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible.
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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.
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On poetry: Everyone wants to know what it means. But nobody is asking, How does it feel?
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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
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