Mary Oliver's Lovely Lines
Mary Oliver could condense extraordinary wisdom in single lines. Below are some of my favourites—the lines that repeat over and over in my mind long after the poem is finished.
As a poet, I feel conflicted about plucking single lines from poems like this. On the one hand, the poem as a whole is what allows a line to exist and make sense (much like a fabulous ending to a novel requires the story that leads up to it). But on the other, some of these lines can absolutely stand alone.
I wonder if you connect with any of these lines too? If you do, you might enjoy reading the entirety of the poem (they will all be available to read online).
Photo: Angel Valentin/New York Times/File
1.
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
~ from The Summer Day
2.
“When it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement.”
~ from When Death Comes
3.
“Listen, are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?”
~ from Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches
4.
”You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
~ from Wild Geese
5.
“I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.”
~ from Lead
6.
“It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world.”
~ from The Invitation
7.
"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."
~ from In Blackwater Woods
8.
“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
~ from Sometimes
9.
"Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift."
~ from The Uses of Sorrow
10.
“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.”
~ from The Ponds
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