Beautiful. Too bad the weather does not match the poem. It reminds me of my childhood, walking through the fields and along the stream watching the butterflies and grasshoppers.

Thanks for popping in here, Cynthia. You make a good point. I think there's room for all the interpretations brought to this discussion though. The poem is big enough.

Your fantasy reminds me of that series of photographic books Above Los Angeles, Above San Francisco, etc.

To me, after posing typically philosophical questions about "Who made life?", in this poem Oliver goes on to show that even an ordinary grasshopper is an important form of life in its own right - with actions that are almost human-like...but different. Then she finishes up by commenting that taking the time to notice life all around us is as important a way of spending our life's time as any other way. In fact, I think it may be more important than many of the ways in which we throw our time away.

This poem reminds me of a common fantasy I have: what would a being, hovering a mile or so above the surface of our world, think of all our frenetic human activity? At that distance we would all look like ants busily scurrying to and fro.... Which, then, of our "important activities" would be truly important?

The Queen of Hearts
She made some tarts
All on a summer's day.

Nah. Doesn't compute.

I often don't pay enough attention to titles, and "The Summer Day" of course also points us in the direction of indolence -- or at least the occasional day's worth -- as proper to the season.

As I think more about it, the grasshopper was featured prominently in Aesop's fables as the lazy alternative to the industrious ant. That ties in better to the general idea of indolence that seems to be guiltily celebrated in Oliver.

Prayer as a form of indolence?

Ruth wrote: "Jim said One thing that interests me is the tendency of poets over the centuries to look at nature and see it telling us about something else.

I think we can chalk up a lot of that to the poet's n..."

The same thing happens with short story writers, Ruth. At least it does with me.

I love Oliver's poem. (Jim, the grasshopper thinks OUR jaws move the wrong way! ;)) In fact, I love Oliver's poem more than Blake's.

One rather disheartening thing I read in the Poetry Judge's Report for the Bridport Prize in 2007 or 2008 encouraged non-winning poets not to be disappointed - that had they submitted Robert Frost's "Birches" (and had Frost not written "Birches," of course and it been an original poem with the submitting author), it no doubt would not have been chosen.

My writing partner, who is an English professor, dean, and PEN/Faulkner winner is always telling me that poets and short story writers have the hardest time placing their very best poems and stories. Why?

But back to Oliver's poem. I love it. I've had summer days like that. I can relate to the poem and yet it's something far, far greater than just what I've experienced. I like the interweaving of the personal and the universal. But I'll bet it would not win Bridport. It's too good.

And speaking of Bridport, I'm waiting for my two best stories to lose, so I can post them on my page here. Mark, my writing partner, compared them to Katherine Mansfield, which pleased and flattered and humbled me no end, but Mansfield has been largely ignored by most, and I'm being ignored by most as well. LOL I guess I should take that as a compliment.

Oliver doesn't pick a creature of either innocence or violence. It could be just an oddity that moves its jaws the wrong way. Although grasshoppers are often associated with plagues, the notion of it eating sugar out of her hand and floating away makes the insect seem kind of lovable

Oliver asks the same questions that Blake asked, ends up in a prayerful pose in spite of herself, then tries to dismiss the whole idea and turn it all into a question of setting priorities for your daily, if wild and precious, life.

Could it be that disbelief poses its own dilemmas?

I agree with you,Philip, about "The Lamb" being unsettling in a way. I pair it with Blake's "Tiger"

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

As Newengland suggested, standing next to Blake's Lamb of God is the God of Abraham and Isaac.

Jim said One thing that interests me is the tendency of poets over the centuries to look at nature and see it telling us about something else.

I think we can chalk up a lot of that to the poet's natural tendency to metaphor. I know when I write I'm always waiting for the idea behind the motivating idea to pop out and tell me what it is.

You'd hate to be a lamb near any guy named Isaac....

Sherry, your 'swooping' image is so apt for this grasshopper.

Newengland and Jim mention the use of nature. I am wary of animals in poetry, and even Jim's Blake (a poem I normally find much too treacly for comfort) gives me the willies - I think of how most all little lambs (including the Lamb of God) end up slaughtered for food.

In this case, the projection of human intention onto the bug, whose flight and wings remind the narrator of prayer, makes me uneasy. But ultimately it works for me. The speaker sees a picture of her 'wild and precious life' in the oh-so-ordinary doings of this sugar-happy insect, known more for its wanton destructiveness than its bliss. But that paradox also powers Oliver's assertion of the importance of apparent 'idleness' to our need to find or construct a meaningful life.

I can't read this without hearing echos of William Blake:

Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee,
Gave thee life, and bade thee feed
By the stream and o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, wooly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?

Little lamb, I’ll tell thee;
Little lamb, I’ll tell thee:
He is called by thy name,
For He calls Himself a lamb,
He is meek, and He is mild,
He became a little child;
I a child, and thee a Lamb,
We are called by His Name.
Little lamb, God bless thee!
Little lamb, God bless thee!


While Blake comes to a nice comfortable conclusion (here at least), Oliver doesn't exactly although she makes wandering about sound like fun.

One thing that interests me is the tendency of poets over the centuries to look at nature and see it telling us about something else. Wordsworth and Emerson are the biggest culprits, but the line obviously stretches from Homer's Wind Dark Sea to Mary Oliver.

Is there automatically a connection? Much as I want to deplore it all, looking at the fascination of contemporary artists like Takashi Murakami with popular culture I wonder if it is not possible to draw your images from anywhere.

I loved the way it swooped from the huge to the small and particular and then swooped back again.

The poem's opening is prosaic enough (the rhetorical questions), but the allusions to prayer and implication that nature is cathedral work especially well. I also hear echoes of Thoreau in her final lines. Surely, most modern-day folk would consider her day idle and foolish, just as most 19th-century folk considered Thoreau's "eccentricities" to be so. But who's kidding who (or possibly whom)?

We’ve had Mary Oliver on deck before. Born in 1935 in Ohio, she is the author of several volumes of poetry, including New and Selected Poems, which won the National Book award; House of Light, which won the Christopher Award and the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award; and American Primitive, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize.

Her honors include an Amer Acad of Arts & Letters Award, a Lannan Literary Award, the Poetry Society of America's Shelley Memorial Prize and Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and the NEA.

Mary Oliver teaches at Bennington College, and lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Bennington, Vermont.

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?