A friend has suggested that I feature the work of the very popular and prolific American poet Mary Oliver (1935-2019). I was only vaguely aware of the name at that point, but thought the least I could do was pay her some proper attention and report back.

My conclusion (sorry, Andy) is that hers is very much the sort of poetry, nature-loving and reflective, that I want to like and usually do, but somehow hers doesn’t quite work for me. I’m not sure why. She’s certainly accessible, and I thoroughly approve of poets being accessible. She clearly appeals to popular sentiment, but again, nothing wrong with that: I am all in favour of readers having a genuine response to what does move them rather than a simulated response to what they feel should move them. I just find her a little unsubtle, a little too in your face. I think it would have been better if she had stood back more in her poems rather than pushing herself to their forefront so much. I feel too, as with many contemporary poets, that she could have benefited from a stricter form, the advantage of this, if used properly, being that it forces you to focus on what you really want and need to say and discourages you from merely wittering on. But I’ll get out of the way now and let you form your own opinions: this poem, ‘Wild Geese’, is one of her best-known and evidently best-loved.

Wild Geese

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.

Mary Oliver