Welcome to Litsy!

"Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?"

From "Peonies"

"I think this is the prettiest world
So long as you don't mind a little dying
How could there be a day in your whole life
That doesn't have its splash of happiness"

From the "The Kingfisher"

This was Soo great! Listening to Mary Oliver read a selection of her poems was so incredible. I will return to this again and again! #queerbooks

The air suddenly feels thinner without the promise of Mary Oliver‘s words gracing it. I am in deep mourning. She will never write again. Thank you for the blessings you have bestowed on us by giving us the world and allowing us to breathe it in.

Road trip to Sarasota with @WanderingBookaneer to pick up some #MaryOliver books she has on hold 💜

RIP Mary Oliver

When my mental health was some of the worst it‘s ever been, a friend sent me this poem and I read it hundreds of times. I come back to it whenever I‘m feeling lowest, and it‘s probably my favourite post-renaissance piece of writing. I just messaged my friend again to tell her she didn‘t know how much it meant when she sent it to me.

Thank you for leaving us with writing like this Mary, shows how much writing can help people

#BlackCatChallenge Day 11: Because #Black(water) pond still fits, I suppose. And amidst all the chaos, I find myself leaning into Oliver‘s voice more and more.

Each poem goes to the simple essence of a thing- whether a tree, a bird, a flower, a forest animal, a dog, death. Reading Mary Oliver is already a great thing... Hearing Mary Oliver read Mary Oliver is even better.

My first exposure to the poetry of Mary Oliver. Even allowing for how much I hated her reading voice - like that of a brittle old school teacher feigning kindness and wisdom but betraying self-important grumpiness - I found these poems deeply unremarkable. I counted perhaps three interesting turns of phrase in the whole collection; the rest was dull dull dull. My one wild and precious life shall be spent avoiding any further exposure.