Mary Oliverās poetry collection āRed Birdā is the first Iāve read of her. I think āDevotionsā is the recommended collection to start with, so perhaps that was my mistake, but I didnāt really connect to any of her poetry. But Iāve also heard that Mary Oliver mainly writes about nature, and I honestly like to experience nature more than I like to read about it. And I like to read about people more than I like to experience them. That might sum up my reading preferences rather nicely.Ā
āRed Birdā is all about the beauty of nature, how humans would be much happier if they lived life simply like an animal, gratitude for lessons from nature, etc.Ā
There were a few lines that I really liked (see those lines below), but overall I wasn’t entirely impressed. It didnāt speak to me. Again, perhaps it was the subject matter. There were two poems that felt out of place in the collection because they had little to do with nature, and those were actually the ones I liked the most: āLove Sorrowā and āWhat is the greatest gift.ā The other poem I liked that had more to do with nature and how it connects to human experience was āThe Orchard,ā probably because it wasnāt as straightforward and obvious as the others. The others I felt were uninspired and too simplistic. The language made for light reading, very accessible for modern readers, which isnāt my thing. The imagery wasnāt anything special. The structure of a lot of the poems was too obviously āinsert random line break here so itās visually obvious itās a poem even though it does not serve the language well.āĀ
I purposefully picked up Mary Oliver because I wanted to become more acquainted with more contemporary poetry and because so many people like her. I wanted to learn how to write poetry proven to be liked by contemporary audiences, but if this is it, Iād rather not.
Lines that stood out to me (from three different poems):
and I could not tell / which fit me / more comfortably, the power / or the powerlessness; / neither would have me / entirely; I was divided
Why are we made the way we are made, that to love is to want?
I did not come into this world / to be comforted. / I came, like red bird, to sing.