Post by louisa on Nov 29, 2008 0:59:34 GMT 2
Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver
Submitted by Malaika King Albrecht and Judy Longley
Malaika
This poem resonates with me for many reasons. I connect with the poem's celebration of the interdependent web of life and the idea that life is not about just being good but about loving deeply what we love. Many years after I first read the poem, when I was in labor with my youngest daughter Serena, my friend Tracy recited the poem for me. She is a theatre professor, and she spoke with such feeling that all of us in the room (me, my husband, another friend, the midwife and several student nurses) were moved. At that moment, I was acutely aware of the soft animal of my body and how one must let it love what it loves. When I read this poem now, I am brought back to her birth and to nursing Serena, and I hear my daughter's first sounds announcing her place here.
Judy
I would walk on my knees to have written this poem. It never fails to elicit an emotion in me of the difficulty of life, yet how beautiful it remains. "The earth offers itself to your imagination," is one of my favorite lines because this is true for all who look at the physical world and penetrate its beauty. Although the poem is spiritual it denies that we must live by religious beliefs of sin and repentance. What we need is compassion, not redemption, for, simply by being alive we are "good enough." We belong to the earth and its kingdom of animals. Our body, too, is lovable and capable of giving love and will let us know what we need if we but listen. However, one of the paradoxes of life is that we suffer at times and are lonely despite the beauty that surrounds us, therefore we all have despair that we can share and transcend our loneliness for a time. As a psychotherapist I used this poem many times with therapy groups and invariably someone would break into sobs, others would have tears wetting their cheeks. It is powerful "medicine" and I always felt as though I were sharing my compassion and offering a gift to the clients who were suffering. The message: You Are not alone but a member of the "family of things." Thank you, Mary Oliver, for this poem.
Read Wild Geese at:
www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/oliver/online_poems.htm
More about the poet at:
www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/265
by Mary Oliver
Submitted by Malaika King Albrecht and Judy Longley
Malaika
This poem resonates with me for many reasons. I connect with the poem's celebration of the interdependent web of life and the idea that life is not about just being good but about loving deeply what we love. Many years after I first read the poem, when I was in labor with my youngest daughter Serena, my friend Tracy recited the poem for me. She is a theatre professor, and she spoke with such feeling that all of us in the room (me, my husband, another friend, the midwife and several student nurses) were moved. At that moment, I was acutely aware of the soft animal of my body and how one must let it love what it loves. When I read this poem now, I am brought back to her birth and to nursing Serena, and I hear my daughter's first sounds announcing her place here.
Judy
I would walk on my knees to have written this poem. It never fails to elicit an emotion in me of the difficulty of life, yet how beautiful it remains. "The earth offers itself to your imagination," is one of my favorite lines because this is true for all who look at the physical world and penetrate its beauty. Although the poem is spiritual it denies that we must live by religious beliefs of sin and repentance. What we need is compassion, not redemption, for, simply by being alive we are "good enough." We belong to the earth and its kingdom of animals. Our body, too, is lovable and capable of giving love and will let us know what we need if we but listen. However, one of the paradoxes of life is that we suffer at times and are lonely despite the beauty that surrounds us, therefore we all have despair that we can share and transcend our loneliness for a time. As a psychotherapist I used this poem many times with therapy groups and invariably someone would break into sobs, others would have tears wetting their cheeks. It is powerful "medicine" and I always felt as though I were sharing my compassion and offering a gift to the clients who were suffering. The message: You Are not alone but a member of the "family of things." Thank you, Mary Oliver, for this poem.
Read Wild Geese at:
www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/oliver/online_poems.htm
More about the poet at:
www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/265