Mary Oliver: Don’t Be So Mean to Her!

I know some people think Mary Oliver, as a poet, is overrated, but some of her poems still make me weep, in a good way. So maybe I’m just too easily impressed. Whatever! :-)
I’m still loving this one right now:

Wild Geese

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.

About msmouce

I teach English, primarily online, at TCC through the Virginia Beach campus, on one of our five campuses. We are spread out through Virginia, Chesapeake, Norfolk, and Portsmouth, Virginia. I teach composition most of the time. I no longer teach developmental English online, although I think that developmental English is important for our students. I just think it does a disservice to most of our developmental English students to put them in this environment because they need a more stabilizing influence as they find their way through college (and college-level English) than we can provide online. My English 3 students have been wonderful; however, I don't want to give them short shrift in class, which is what seems to happen online.
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One Response to Mary Oliver: Don’t Be So Mean to Her!

  1. vancemomx5 says:

    Loving this poem very much…been reading it a lot!!

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