Wellsbaum.blog

Writing about life and arts

Mary Oliver: The poem gets written

Mary Oliver: The poem gets written
Photograph by Molly Malone Cook 1964 from Our World by Mary Oliver

“It is 6am and I am working. I am absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social obligations etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, and the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written.”

Mary Oliver

Who needs the muse when you’ve got a proper habit?

Mary Oliver wrote over 15 poetry and essay collections over her writing career. Her prolific output rested on a simple rule of showing up and filling up the canvass every day.

But she was also jotting down notes all the time, out and about, in nature where she felt freest.

Oliver’s poetic vocation called her wherever she went, as she engulfed the world with an insane curiosity. Slow and deliberate, she let her notebooks bleed into the world.

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