The other day I opened my copy of New and Selected Poems: Mary Oliver, and saw inside a note I had written the night she died. I first discovered her work in 2015 while living and working at a Buddhist retreat center in Colorado, and one night while perusing the book exchange, came across the green paperback in which I would four years later write the note that I am re-reading today. It seems that between 2019 and 2020 a lot of notes were written in books that stayed on my altar for a month or two as writers passed away. Some I knew personally—some I admired from afar—all of them, having left their mark on me as a reader, seemed deserving of my prayers.
Two days before Christmas when Joan Didion died, I did not have my copy of We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order To Live, the Everyman’s Library compendium of her works of non-fiction, and felt keenly the desire to have her work with me as I began a new life—one in a world where I would never have another book of hers to look forward to. I wanted so badly to re-read many of her essays—to have her near me—to reconnect with a writer who has left me awed and inspired for years—nine years, to be exact—since the summer a friend and fellow writer took me to Page One bookstore in Albuquerque, insisting on buying me a copy of Slouching Towards Bethlehem, convinced that Didion and I would become great friends. This is a writer whose work continues to offer insight into this disordered, untrusting world. A few weeks ago I was reunited with this book, and have since passed many hours flipping through its 1,104 pages—at times reading passages at random, and at others revisiting particular pieces—pieces about being young in New York, or the Manson trial, American politics or love letters to John Wayne or reflections on her home state of California.
Lovers of literature are truly blessed. Our worlds continue to grow—our perceptions continue to expand—as we discover, with every new writer we meet, ever more ways to look at the world. To make sense of it. Last August I was reading Mary Oliver's Devotions (a selection of work from every one of her books of poetry), and doing so while sitting in the afternoon heat—swatting at the endless flies—listening to the cicadas cry until sundown—and feeling within me every word of what she had collected there, which were true devotions to the natural world. To the connection between us as inseparable from nature. I have heard her say in interviews that while she was terrified by the destruction we visit on ecosystems the world over, she chose devotion over rage. Chose to convey what is good in hopes of inspiring action or respect, as opposed to writing endless volumes as an activist or polemicist.
Even now, as the state of American politics continues to descend through stages of absurdity into what will surely end up being a fascist nightmare, reading Didion's Political Fictions does at least help me make sense of it all. Helps me feel less like a canary in a coal mine or part of a minority, unwilling to buy into the lies and propaganda peddled by the two party system, or their mouth pieces in the press, podcasts and Sunday morning panels. Knowing someone else sees what you see is sometimes the only balm that will soothe a troubled soul.
The greatest gift I have received from these two writers is permission. From Didion I got the permission to write the long sentences—to have dependent clause on dependent clause—to be unafraid of what I observe, or how I report back. I saw in her many decades of observing the world that nothing is off limits. No subject taboo. In reading Oliver I found permission to write about what moves me without shame, without feeling that speaking with love and devotion of the trees or the birds circling in the sky is overly sentimental—and even though it is not the style of this narcissistic era—it is a valid and worthwhile practice, for not everyone wants to read the explicit, confessional or confrontational work that seems en vogue at the moment. Writing about olive trees and the cicadas chanting in the dusty afternoon heat is as necessary as revealing every degradation of one's insufficient childhood. We all must contribute our voices if this is what we have chosen to do with our time. We must keep at it—uncovering our cadences, our own rhythms and powers of observation—enhancing the ability to turn a phrase or elevate a reader's state of mind—until our time is up. These are conversations we have, writer to reader to writer. These are relationships, and like all relationships when a beloved has passed on, we grieve. We celebrate. We remember the lessons they taught us, and we in turn pass those on. This, dear friends, is immortality.
Mary Oliver reading her poetry, 4 August 2001
Interview with Oliver for the program "On Being".
Joan Didion speaking after the publication of "Where I Was From".