Letters for Creatives #9: Life lessons that Mary Oliver taught me

She influenced the world with her poems

Hello, I am Celeste. I write essays on book marketing, creativity, writing and send it to your inbox every Thursday. Thank you and welcome all the new readers who have been sending me kind responses when I told you about the newsletter. I appreciate your support on Instagram and now this new project.

The archive of past issues can be found here.

I listened to the On Being podcast episode that Mary Oliver was on. Listening to her talk about her life taught me a few lessons and touched a part of my heart. It was a great loss that she died in 2019. Her poetry would be a solace for people for decades to come. I will share some life lessons that I learned from the podcast.

Oliver became my favourite poet since I came across her poem for the first time. The first poem that I came across was Peonies.

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

She was deeply inspired by nature. She is known to write when she paid attention to her surroundings and felt her feelings as she wrote.

You need empathy with it rather than just reporting. Reporting is for field guides. And they’re great. They’re helpful. But that’s what they are. They’re not thought provokers. They don’t go anywhere. And I say somewhere that attention is the beginning of devotion, which I do believe.
– Mary Oliver

Create something that has a positive influence

Even though she was living in a difficult household when she was young, she wrote poetry that is gentle and soothing. She did not hold onto the past and wrote a lot of poems that are dark. 

Writing poems that focus on the beauty of the world does not mean that she did not know the darkness of the world. She had her own struggles in life.

For me, it was the darkness of the world that makes me want to write poems that embrace the beauty of daily life and the world.

Do something that you love and enjoy

Oliver often walked around the woods in Ohio. She would scribble words that would become poems. She loved writing while she was walking in the woods. These habits inspired her to write poetry that shows her passion for the world. When you do something you love, your passion came through and people know you love doing that particular thing.

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

Embrace joy and contentment in life

You cannot buy joy with money. Joy comes when you stay in the present moment and focuses on what is happening. You do not think about the past or the future. 

When you feel joy, feel it deeply. You would remember that day where you feel joyful for a long time. You may not remember the exact details but knowing that you have moments of joy is an incredible gift for you. It keeps you going when you want to give up or feel hopeless.

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.
– Mary Oliver

Your life depends on what you pay attention to

If you pay attention to the positive aspect of life, you find everything that you can do and have control over. You could change your life for the better if you stay positive in situations that you cannot control.

Focus on the good in the world and think about what you can do with it. You may think about how you can contribute to the world positively, such as writing poetry or stories that bring solace to the world as Mary Oliver did for her entire life.

What does it mean that the earth is so beautiful? And what shall I do about it? What is the gift that I should bring to the world? What is the life that I should live?
– Mary Oliver

Essay on Mary Oliver

I read a New Yorker essay about Oliver, her poetry and her poetry being dedicated to her friend Molly Malone Cook. I was shedding tears as I read about Oliver including a prose poem dedicated to Cook, who she lived with for three decades, in Our World, a collection of Cook’s photographs Oliver put together. I got touched by the poem and the story so deeply as I have written a dedicated poem for a new friend recently.

I wrote the poem dedicating to Samantha Yau, a friend who I started to know in September on Instagram, about how we are so similar yet different at the same time. Not many people can compare to her micro poems. Most of them are in one line but she can express so much in that one line. The way she addresses issues in society and relationships is remarkable.

---

I value your feedback, suggestions, constructive critiques, compliments, etc. If you have anything creative or interesting that you want to send me, send it to celestetsang@gmail.com

Please answer a few questions for this questionnaire to improve the newsletter. I appreciate your feedback.

Thank you for reading!

If you want to support my newsletter, consider buying me a coffee.