Four by Mary Oliver

I enjoy reading poetry and I would like to get better at writing it. So I try to read at least one poem a day. My knowledge of contemporary poetry is woefully lacking, so when I saw four references (including this interview in a national magazine) to Mary Oliver in as many weeks, I decided I should read some of her work. I read one book last year, and enjoyed it, so I decided to pick up a few more. She's written many collections of poetry and essays, and I recently read four of them.

Mary Oliver writes many of her poems the way I would like to write poems. Many of them deal with nature and have some beautiful imagery. Generally, they are accessible, so there's no need to be afraid of them. They can also be enjoyed on multiple levels. Here are the titles of the books I read and some of the poems I enjoyed from each of them.

Why I Wake Early

• Why I Wake Early
• Freshen the Flowers, She Said
• Breakage
• Logos

The Truro Bear and Other Adventures

• The Hermit Crab
• The Summer Day

West Wind

• Black Oaks
• Am I Not Among the Early Risers
• Stars
• Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches

Owls and Other Fantasies

• Wild Geese
• Such Singing in the Wild Branches
• Some Herons

Here is a quote I thought was good.

I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing as though I had wings. -- from "Starlings in Winter" (page 55)

If you enjoy nature and poetry, I would recommend Mary Oliver's work.

Impassable Wilderness

Prue lives outside Portland with her family. Since she was a baby she's been warned not to go near the Impassable Wilderness. One day, she is at the park with her Sibley Guide and her baby brother, Mac, when suddenly Mac is abducted by a murder of crows. This is the beginning of Wildwood, written by Colin Meloy (singer/songwriter for the band the Decemberists) and illustrated by his wife Carson Ellis. Despite being over 500 pages long, this book is written at about a 5th to 6th grade reading level.

On the whole, it was an enjoyable book. I'm pretty good at willing suspension of disbelief, so I had no problem with the abduction by crows, oblivious parents, or a forest full of bandits, talking animals and mystics who talk to trees, just outside of Portland. It's Meloy's first novel, which accounts for some of the times during my reading when I was a little dissatisfied with how things were going (novel writing is difficult work, at least for most of us). I also had trouble with the two main characters, Prue and her friend Curtis always believing evil people who were lying to them. But that wasn't a problem with the book so much as it was a problem with me and my recognition that I would probably be too trusting and gullible myself.

The novel has a clear environmentalist bent that I find appealing, especially since it acknowledged, figuratively and literally, the evilness of invasive ivy. I also liked that the readers, who are probably mostly kids, are not talked down to. They will probably learn a few new vocabulary words while reading. I have no problem with a writer using "smart" words that his readers might not know provided that those words are the "right" ones for the situation. If you've ever written something, you'll know what I mean by that. I think Meloy employed the occasional "smart" word very well.

There were a few small plot annoyances and I didn't care for how Curtis's story ended. But, I think that was just a setup for the sequel. Yes, there will be a sequel, and I will read it.

This would probably be a fun book for families to read together. For more information, you can visit the book's very pleasant website at: www.wildwoodchronicles.com.

Oceans

I used part of the long weekend to watch DisneyNature's film Oceans. Before watching it, I wondered if, being a Disney film, it would skip some of the less warm and fuzzy aspects of nature, such as animals eating each other. While the film did not linger too long on these, it did show some hunting and eating scenes.

I had already seem some of the footage used in making the film, such as five minutes of an orca hunting sea lions (or were they seals?), and I was glad the scene didn't last too long in the film. The most difficult part for me to watch was the scene with the fishing nets full of blood and water and a fisherman's boot as he works in the net.

If you like nature, the ocean, fish, or just beautiful photography then you'll enjoy this movie.