I was reading some poems by Mary Oliver. I downloaded a free sample on kindle. Not my favorite poet, as you know, but I had not remembered just how bad it was. So here is my latest bad poem, inspired directly by her sympathy for the natural world.
Does the bluebird
offer us food
for thought?
No, that is regurgitated
worm for
her bird babies.
Do the starlings
invading my balcony
alert us to a more alert way
of being in the world?
No, they don't give
a fuck about me.
Does the hawk circling
the chicken yard
give me a new poem to write.
No. What kind of stupid
do you think I am?
Does a rock feel sorry for itself?
2 comments:
They have Mary Oliver's stuff all over Dad's retirement home walls and it seems to correspond to the world of the social workers, not the residents, who to judge by what they carry around have more sophisticated tastes.
When I lasted visited Manhattan, a year ago August, I stayed at a beautiful hotel, The Excelsior (next to the Museum of Natural History). Next to my bed was Mary Oliver's Collected Poems. I was puzzled. Give me the Collected Dorothy Parker (this would have been an excellent place to discover Eileen Myles!) - we're in New York! I remembered your assessment of Oliver and dove in anyway, but couldn't stay long with it long. The poems seemed ... servile.
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