An Evening with Mary Oliver: Who Can Open the Door Who Does Not Reach for the Latch?

Last night I went to hear Mary Oliver read her poems to a sold-out audience at UCSB. Sold out...and there were quite a few folks hanging around in the hopes of finding a stray seat. It does my heart good to see so many people excited by poetry, so many who recognize their own thirst and what they need to quench it.

The title of Oliver's latest book, in fact, is Thirst, forty-three new poems that continue her lifelong celebration of the natural world while exploring the depths of grief and a kind of faith that pushes through like new green blades of grass.

"My work," she has written, "is loving the world.And in her loving, she reminds us all to love, to notice, to pay attention. On this night she is wearing a gray sweater and a funny knit hat that is slightly askew; she looks very tiny at the podium. Her demeanor is modest and humble, and her words are at times a kind of prayer, as is her life.

"The world is holy," she tells us, "and I have great gratitude that I can look at it."

She starts with Wild Geese, which is clearly on the "favorite" list of nearly everyone there: 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.Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes ,over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

She reads and we listen and there is a wonderful shared stillness in the audience. Now and then I write down fragments in the dark.

"Listen," she asks, "are you breathing just a little and calling it a life? and "Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?"

And of course there are these compelling lines from Summer Day:

Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

After the reading, there is an opportunity to ask questions. Everyone seems shy and subdued, still letting the experience sink in, but eventually a few brave souls make their way to the microphone.

One woman asks Oliver if her writing is affected by her concerns about the harm that we are doing to the world and the environmental crisis we are facing. "Does fear get in the way of your writing being joyful?"

"No," Oliver responds, with not a moment's hesitation. "Joy is essential. Hope is essential. And if you keep reminding people how precious and wonderful the world is, you are helping. In my work, I praise what is holy, and we're wrecking it, so we must take action."

Maybe that's one of the things I like about Mary Oliver. She acknowledges threat and faces pain but does not demand self-flagellation or sorrow. On the contrary, she instructs us to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine. Happiness is okay, she says, which is a balm to someone like me, who doesn't often allow herself that. Happiness is a kind of holiness, and it's redemptive in its way.

Her words become an antithesis to despair. By observing and appreciating what we still have, we are more likely to act in ways that sustain it. Yes.

Next an older lady steps up timidly, a sheet of paper in her trembling hand, and says simply,

"I've written a poem for you, and I just want to know if you will accept it as a gift from me."

"Only if you'll read it first," Oliver responds."Oh, dear," says the lady, stammering for a moment. "I hadn't..."

And then she reads, her voice pure and growing steady. Her offering is exquisite and Oliver-esque; it's about how Mary Oliver's books at her bedside reached her like sunbeams and brought her joy. (But the poem is so much better than that makes it sound.) The audience bursts into applause, and Mary Oliver is visibly moved. She accepts the poem and embraces the woman, and the evening feels complete.

One more person stands waiting to speak: a thin young man, twenty-something, probably a student, long hair in dreadlocks.

"What she said," he jokes. For really, how can you follow that?

"But also," he adds, "just from me, thanks for lighting a light in my chest."