By: Ava Gladdin, Poetry Reviewer
Mary Oliver, a poet known mostly for her deep connection to nature, reflects on love, loneliness, and spiritual connections to the natural world in her 2014 collection titled Blue Horses. Oliver is a renowned poet who received many accolades during her career. She is one of the widest-known and most loved female poets of the 20th and 21st centuries due to her astonishingly profound yet simplistic poetry.
Her writing is ethereal and feels as though one is stepping inside of a painting. In this collection, she highlights the beauty around her while questioning the existence of a higher power. Her prose and technique are the driving force of this piece, lending the reader to her imagination.
Oliver’s lack of traditional structure and use of free verse adds a conversational tone to her writing. By sticking to a free-verse style, she lets her language take the driver’s seat. Oliver’s commitment to her craft and adoration for nature is sincere because her spirituality is discussed in “Drifting”, citing the juxtaposition between the invisibility of Gods and the visibility of holiness saying:
I didn’t intend to start thinking about God,
it just happened
How God, or the gods are invisible,
quite understandable.
But holiness is visible, entirely. (4-8)
She writes about feeling lost and finding great comfort and solace in the Earth in her poem “Loneliness” referring to rejection and misunderstanding. When she does write about nature, she does it gently. Oliver says in her poem “What Gorgeous Thing”:
I do not know what gorgeous thing
the bluebird keeps saying
his voice easing out of his throat,
beak, body into the pink air
of the early morning. I like it
whatever it is. (1-6)
The use of prose in this poem places readers directly into Oliver’s palm. They can see the bluebird and hear the call that it makes, bringing readers closer to the author.
Not all of Oliver’s poems depict nature in such a loving form. In one of her poems titled “Little Crazy Love Song”, she describes being in love. She writes:
This is what I have.
The dull hangover of waiting,
The blush of my heart on the damp grass,
The flower-faced moon. (9-12)
This description of love is what sets apart Oliver from a lot of poets. She describes love in a deeper, more emphatic sense. It has more of the illusion of sadness and longing than older love poems. Her use of language and ability to make the reader feel so strongly from a few simple lines catapult her to the top of my favorites list.
Blue Horses stands out as one of my favorite pieces of her work. While I may be a bit biased, given that Mary Oliver sits in a special place in my heart, I can wholeheartedly recommend this collection to readers. Each individual line feels like you’re experiencing spring through her lens. Oliver delicately guides readers through the forest of her mind and soul in this collection. I enjoyed reading this anthology, and I advise all readers to experience this book to its fullest: with a hot chai in hand watching the leaves fall.
Mary Oliver, the nature-obsessed, spiritually curious woman that you are!