Mary Oliver writes with a simplicity that pierces straight into the matter—or precisely, what matters: our connection to ourselves and the natural worMary Oliver writes with a simplicity that pierces straight into the matter—or precisely, what matters: our connection to ourselves and the natural world. Apart from the most famous poems in this collection (“Wild Geese” and “The Journey”), I particularly loved “Rage”, “The Fire”, “Members of the Tribe”, “Orion”, “Landscape”, and “1945-1985: Poem for the Anniversary”.
I saw what a child must love, I saw what love might have done had we loved in time. — “A Visitor”
In the films of Dacau and Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen the dead rise from the earth and are piled in front of us, the starved stare across forty years, and lush, green, musical Germany shows again its iron claws, which won't
ever be forgotten, which won't ever be understood, but which did, slowly, for years, scrape across Europe
while the rest of the world did nothing. — “1945-1985: Poem for the Anniversary”
A clever book with such charming characters. Reads overly cutesy at times and is filled with twists and turns and tied-up-ends only made-up stories haA clever book with such charming characters. Reads overly cutesy at times and is filled with twists and turns and tied-up-ends only made-up stories have, but funny and heartwarming nonetheless. This book is about a lot of things—connection, desperation, redemption—and it deals with some serious topics in a way that feels entirely human. Because, given the circumstances, aren't we all just a few steps away from a bank robbery and hostage drama?
"The truth. There isn’t any. All we’ve managed to find out about the boundaries of the universe is that it hasn’t got any, and all we know about God is that we don’t know anything. So the only thing a mom who was a priest demanded of her family was simple: that we do our best. We plant an apple tree today, even if we know the world is going to be destroyed tomorrow."
This book gave me insight into the benefits of therapy and why it's so important to go through the (often dark and painful) process of healing. ThrougThis book gave me insight into the benefits of therapy and why it's so important to go through the (often dark and painful) process of healing. Through the lives of her clients and her own, this book shows the contradictions of what it means to be human. We're all pretty messed up, but we have the capacity to grow and love. A funny, enriching, and compassionate quarantine read.
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Some favorite quotes:
"People often mistake numbness for nothingness, but numbness isn’t the absence of feelings; it’s a response to being overwhelmed by too many feelings."
"Many of us take for granted the people we love and the things we find meaningful, only to realize when our deadline is announced, that we'd been skating by on the project: our lives."
"There’s no hierarchy of pain. Suffering shouldn’t be ranked, because pain is not a contest."
"Why would we choose a profession that requires us to meet unhappy, distressed, abrasive, or unaware people and sit with them, one after the other, alone in a room? . . . [T]herapists know at first, each patient is simply a snapshot, a person captured in a particular moment. It's like a photo of you taken from an unfortunate angle and with a sour expression on your face. There might also be a photo in which you are glowing, caught opening a present or mid-laugh with a lover. Both are you in that fraction of time, and neither is you in your entirety."...more
What motivates someone to run into war rather than away from it? Why risk your life for a photograph?
Reading this memoir, I was overwhelmed with fear What motivates someone to run into war rather than away from it? Why risk your life for a photograph?
Reading this memoir, I was overwhelmed with fear over the hardships she faced, heartache towards the cruelties she documented, and disbelief over her compulsion to her craft. But most of all, I was filled with admiration for the dedication of her and her colleagues—their unshakable resolve that photography mattered as a form of both documentation and art. And looking at her photographs themselves, I undoubtedly agree.
This book also told of a personal struggle to find love in a dangerous profession, and what it truly means to live a balanced life. How her femininity was perceived in foreign countries and across various cultures. How, being female, she had a different set of difficulties than her male counterparts, and how she felt the continual need to prove herself despite eventually being part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team and being awarded the MacArthur Grant.
With her story, I see the importance of journalism as a means of documentation and telling the truth. Her stories of censorship took something I knew only as something that happened remotely to something that left me indignant and disgusted. She gave me an intimate view on how democracy, in its rose-covered glasses, is often guilty of hypocrisy and lacking of compassion for the very people they try to help. Yet, in her story, I found hope that ordinary people with enough conviction (and perhaps some naivety) could help us remember that we are all broken and beautifully human, beneath it all.
“I wondered what we were doing there when so many others had failed to occupy Afghanistan in the past. Were we tried to influence and change a culture that was hundreds of years old?” ...more
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