Lilian Nattel's Blog, page 49

Inspirational Interview with Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver is famous as a poet and famous for her sense of privacy, so this interview with Maria Shriver is a coup for O.com. I couldn't just post a link, I have to excerpt some of my favourite parts.

Maria Shriver: Mary, you've told me that for you, poetry is and always was a calling. How do you know when something is a calling?

Mary Oliver: When you can't help but go there. We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I stayed where I was happy. I spent a great deal of time in my younger years just writing and reading, walking around the woods in Ohio, where I grew up. I often say if you could lay out all the writing I did in those years, it would go to the moon and back. It was bad, it was derivative. But when you love what you're doing, honestly, you can get better…

Maria Shriver: Do you think it's possible to contain the spiritual world and also be of the "real world" in 2011?

Mary Oliver: I definitely believe that. And I think if you skimp on one or the other, you're not getting the whole show. You have to be in the world to understand what the spiritual is about, and you have to be spiritual in order to truly be able to accept what the world is about.

Maria Shriver: When you talk of the spiritual, though, you're not talking about organized religion.

Mary Oliver: I'm not, though I do think ceremony is beautiful and powerful. But I've also met some people in organized religion who aren't so hot. I've written before that God has "so many names." To me, it's all right if you look at a tree, as the Hindus do, and say the tree has a spirit. It's a mystery, and mysteries don't compromise themselves—we're never gonna know. I think about the spiritual a great deal. I like to think of myself as a praise poet…

Maria Shriver: So you never wanted your poetry to be a place where you worked out your own struggles. And yet "The Journey," my all-time favorite poem, seems to deal with darker themes.

Mary Oliver: Well, looking back, I'm shocked to see that I wrote that. Because I was always very private about my life, and yet the poems in Dream Work [1986] are not so private as I thought. I'm glad I wrote them, and I'm doing a little more of that now—using personal material. I want to be braver and more honest about my life. When you're sexually abused, there's a lot of damage—that's the first time I've ever said that out loud…

Maria Shriver: One line of yours I often quote is, "What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" What do you think you have done with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver: I used up a lot of pencils.

Maria Shriver: [Laughs.]

Mary Oliver: What I have done is learn to love and learn to be loved. That didn't come easy. And I learned to consider my life an amazing gift. Those are the things…

Maria Shriver: You had a 40-year relationship with Molly. How did her death change your life?

Mary Oliver: I was very, very lonely.

Maria Shriver: You've written in your work that you rarely spent any time apart. How did you avoid being crushed by losing her?

Mary Oliver: I had decided I would do one of two things when she died. I would buy a little cabin in the woods, and go inside with all my books and shut the door. Or I would unlock all the doors…

Maria Shriver: We live in a society where people think they're too old at 55 or 60 to do anything else. And you're 75! I find it fascinating that you've become happier, you're braver, you're more excited, you're healed from the early trauma of sexual abuse.

Mary Oliver: I'm also something else I never was—I'm funny!

Those are just the highlights–do read the whole thing. It's such a wonderful interview. I want to reread it all again.

h/t Cassandra Pages

Filed under: Literary Tagged: Mary Oliver interview

Friday Chitchat

It's the end of a well intentioned week where I was side-tracked by a virus, severe enough to keep me in bed and unable to do much of anything, but not bad enough to avoid boredom. I finished The Perpetual Curate, but had no energy to write about it, or at least not enough clarity of thought to furnish the words. A couple of books I wanted came into my ebook hold box at the library, but my fluishness made time pass in an odd way so that by the time I got around to downloading them, I'd missed the deadline.

I chose new themes for my Q&A, book, and deleted scenes blogs. I browsed magazines on and off-line (I subscribe to National Geographic, Scientific American, The Walrus; A picks up Spacing from stands, and a friend passes along NYRB).

And I've begun The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard, which finally arrived from the UK courtesy of Abebooks, a wonderful source of used books. I can't say much about it yet (being at pg 15), except that I'm curious about its publishing history. It first came out in 1980, was acquired by Virago Press and published in 1995, which in itself is curious. But more so, it was re-issued in 2004 and was subsequently reprinted 7 times between 2004 and 2007. I wonder why the upsurge of interest in this 30 year old novel.

I've been following the news, more nuclear danger in Japan, no-fly zone in Libya, and an election looming on my own home turf (oh, please, can we unstick the Tories from their grip?). And I remind myself to be grateful for the very small misery of being stuck in bed for a couple of days having tea and toast.

And now I need to go to dinner, having graduated from toast to lentil soup with matzaballs! I hope that you are all well and have as sunny a weekend as is predicted here.

Filed under: Personal Tagged: chat

surprising research: more serious brain injuries associated with more life satisfaction

Perhaps the most curious finding was that participants who'd sustained more serious injuries tended to report being more satisfied with their lives. This association was mediated by the social and identity factors – that is, participants who'd sustained a more serious injury also tended to identify more strongly as a survivor, and to have more social support and improved relationships.

via bps-research-digest.blogspot.com

I wonder if that's because they get and accept more care and support? Is that all any of us need?

Filed under: Interesting Tagged: psycho-neurology

origins of humans: Canada vs U.S.

This does not bode well for American r&d | The Intersection | Discover Magazine http://ow.ly/4myqV

Filed under: Interesting Tagged: attitudes on evolution

revenge of paper

Could this new book kill the Kindle? The Guardian http://ow.ly/4mxdn

Filed under: Literary Tagged: publishing

1861 mothers and daughters employed in Swiss watchmaking

My grandmother made whole watches!' said an old woman, with a sigh who was now sitting at home with her daughter, employed in one single operation in a little cog for the great manufactory, 'and at that time women were much higher in the work than they are now, and also got higher payment. They were few in number, but extremely dexterous. Now they are innumerable, but their dexterity is employed upon a mere nothing–a very crumb.

via scientificamerican.com




Filed under: Interesting Tagged: women at work

Katie Roiphe on mom Anne's latest and most scandalous memoir

However, if you go to a Paris Review party on White Street, or an N+1 party, you will still find the young male novelist, now ironic, self-deprecating, exquisitely confident, in his plaid shirt and glasses, just back from Buenos Aires, maybe, and the girls who eagerly orbit him. So there is still a certain amount of accommodating, affirming female energy circling the male editors and writers; a certain male radiance to be fed off of and deferred to and seduced. The dynamic is different, definitely more subtle and fashionably post-feminist, but it would be dishonest if I said that the Paris Review party circa 1964 was entirely unrecognizable to me.

via nytimes.com

I read one of Anne Roiphe's memoirs years ago.. It came in the mail, sent by the publisher. I didn't know why and was too shy to write to the author about how interesting I'd found it. Ever since, it's been on my mind. Click on the link above for an interesting take on her latest.

Filed under: Miscellany

self-published 26 yo sold millions but now

Going traditional, Amanda Hocking sells rights to St. Martin's Press – http://ow.ly/4lXyg

Filed under: Miscellany

the boars are back in Britain

The tusks are for entrenching, for earth-moving, for looting bulbs under the trees and tearing strips in fields. I waited at my corner of the wood and watched them pass again. They did not make as much noise as I had imagined. Their gait was dainty, their bellies high off the ground, their steps precise and decisive.

via granta.com

Lovely short essay about encounter with boars in British woods.

Filed under: Miscellany

book tarred and feathered

Bestseller claims all troubles due to deep thought + choice, go for whoosh instead, reviewed http://ow.ly/4lvcl

Filed under: Miscellany