Upstream: Selected Essays

by Mary Oliver

If this was lost, let us all be lost always.

I never met any of my friends, of course, in a usual way—they were strangers, and lived only in their writings. But if they were only shadow-companions, still they were constant, and powerful, and amazing. That is, they said amazing things, and for me it changed the world.

But first and foremost, I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple—or a green field—a place to enter, and in which to feel.

I read my books with diligence, and mounting skill, and gathering certainty. I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.

and he sat back in the awful prison of himself,

Reading, then writing, then desiring to write well, shaped in me that most joyful of circumstances—a passion for work.

You must not ever stop being whimsical.