Finding Our Foremothers
Late last year, I went on retreat to upstate New York to focus on my writing. The house that I stayed in was charming. There was a small library with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over a forest, and I spent many happy hours there curled on a floor cushion reading. For some reason, I felt most drawn to the poetry of Mary Oliver that week. Maybe it was the serene pastoral setting outside the view of the window, coupled with the fact that I knew Mary’s work dealt largely with her charming reflections on the natural world, but something drew me to her that weekend.
Open to serene inspiration and magic, I pulled all the Mary Oliver books I could find off the shelf and settled in for reading. I discovered poems like:
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”-Wild Geese, Mary Oliver
And this one:
“You can
die for it-
an idea,
or the world. People
have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound
to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But
this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought
of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun
blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises
under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?
What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it
whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.”-Sunrise, Mary Oliver
Beyond the beauty of the works themselves, I read Mary’s biography in the back of the book. In doing so, I learned with profound amazement that she published her first book of poetry at the age of only 28. It inspired so much hope in me. Many times, no matter what age we are, we feel this profound sense of loss and disappointment when we realize that something we always thought we could do we are now “too old” for. I remember around age 9 finding out how early some children started gymnastics, and feeling like I was “too old” to learn to do backflips and cartwheels, not to mention entirely too tall and therefore too far away from the ground. And I remember the disappointment of turning 13 without going en pointe in ballet and feeling, subsequently, that I was “too old” for ballet dancing.
But Mary inspired me. Reading that she got her start at an age that was still in the future from where I was inspired me like nothing else. I received a collection of Alice Walker’s essays as a college graduation present and loved it, particularly a moving essay on the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, but when I realized that she had published it to great renown, laud, and recognition at the age of 23, I immediately felt behind the curve. I didn’t even claim the label of writer until I was 26. And while my creative journey has propelled me forward immensely in even the past year, I’m not to where I want to be yet.
So for me, Mary sang hope. Not only with her beautiful poetry but with her lived experience and just taking the time that she did to reach her life goals. Last month. I created a board with the pictures of 15 women writers who inspire me. Moreover, I tried to find pictures of them around the time that they were my age, more or less. Our foremothers have already laid a strong foundation for us in literary traditions. They mapped out a path for us just by living and being who they were. Centered on my board is Lorraine Hansberry, who lived a mere 34 years, and yet whose plays changed American storytelling. It’s up to us to go back and sit at their feet, to learn what we need to forge forward.
Artist Maira Kalman said that she reads the obituaries first thing every morning to remind her of her own mortality and also to consider what it means to live a life well-lived. I think I’m entirely too sensitive of a creature to do something like that, but I cried the morning I read Mary Oliver’s obituary in the paper (well, on the news app of my phone). It felt almost presumptuous to grieve; I didn’t know her in life, in the traditional sense, no. But I’ll always be grateful for a windy October weekend spent in peaceful silence and the company of her poetry books. I hope in some small way my life can be inspiration for others in the same way that Mary Oliver’s was inspiration for mine.
So thanks be for Mary Oliver. For waiting until 28 to publish just so a 27-year-old writer could feel that maybe it wasn’t too late for her too. I’ll always remember you for what you did for me. Thank you for going before.
I wrote this poem for Mary, in memoriam:
She would be among the trees now
She took her hurt to the outdoors and
found her understanding there
penning us words that did not her heart break.
She was not good or penitent
and reminded us that we do not have to be either
She saw the natural world in
a falling light,
through a glass, clearly,
and in so doing,
helped us all find ourselves.
Rest sweetly, Mary.
Your walk throughout the forest
just began anew.