The Surprising Sound of Mary Oliver's Voice

On the long continuum and many registers of a single voice + seeing yourself from a distance + the grueling and essential nature of attention + a zany writing exercise for breaking new ground

Oak and Evergreen (1880–1890) by Samuel Colman

First, I apologize for being a couple of days late on this March Writing in the Dark newsletter! I started teaching two new classes in March (Writing for Public Health at the University of Minnesota and The Urgency of the Short Form at Stillwater Prison), and, between those endeavors and AWP and the April 30-Day Creativity Challenge, I got a couple of days behind. But I’m caught up now, and thinking constantly about the crucial (and grueling) task of paying attention. We’ve been speaking a lot about that over in the 30-Day Creativity Challenge, too (and it’s not too late for you to join us if you like; all the prompts are archived in order and take only 5-10 minutes to complete).

Writing in the Dark’s First 30-Day Creativity Challenge

And if ever there has been a patron saint of paying attention, it’s Mary Oliver. She spent her own life practicing the art of attention by walking in the woods (and, later, on the beach) every morning. She also smoked cigarettes until the day she died. There’s something about that paradox that grabs me and won’t let go, just as Mary’s surprisingly gruff and irreverent persona grabbed me back in 2010 when I had the incredible honor of being in her presence for a live, in-person reading. I had never heard her read before and was stunned by the alive texture of her voice (again, the cigarettes) and the humor in almost every line. Humor I certainly had not heard before, when reading her poetry to myself.

I’m grateful for this chance to have met Mary Oliver in person and to hear this chasm between the way I read her work in my head and the way she would read it out loud herself. It underscores the importance of, whenever possible, hearing my students read their own work out loud to me. This is a practice I’ve recently brought into my classroom at Stillwater Prison, where I am teaching a flash fiction and nonfiction class to sixteen incarcerated men. Hearing them read their words out loud has been the highlight of my spring so far. The first assignment we tackled was the “I Remember” piece I teach at almost every in-person retreat as well as periodically in the Writing in the Dark workshop, and the absolute crystalline way in which these writers executed my call for concrete, specific, exterior imagery (with an absence of interiority) rocked my world. Every single reading last week brought tears, laughter, or both. Astounding.

And back to Mary Oliver, I’ve been thinking lately about the impact of her work on so very many lives, and how this must be at least partly related to the quality of attention she spent a lifetime honing. I have often shared Oliver’s poetry with my students, including when I taught middle school, where her poems left a more lasting impression among some than I could have predicted—as revealed to me by Aly, who was in my sixth-grade class back in 2005-’06. I taught Aly and her peers the poem “The Summer Day,” which they memorized and learned to recite by heart.

Which leads me to this rare interview conducted by Krista Tippet (On Being) several years ago. When the interview aired, Aly was in college, and I had not been in steady contact with her since she graduated from my class in 2008. But Aly wanted to bring the interview to my attention, and boy did she. I have saved Aly’s email all these years, and always will. Here is what she said (among other things):

"... [D]o you remember when you taught us all ‘The Summer Day?’ There is a clip around 22 minutes in of me reciting the poem as it was taught to me by you, and though I remember being very nervous during the recording, I listen to it now and am overwhelmed with the physical memory of how deeply I felt this poem in the mornings in your classroom as we all spoke it out loud together, learning how to feel it piece by piece.

I am constantly thinking of you, always being reminded of things I ought to thank you for, but one of them is surely the gift you gave me of being able to recite the same thing as my classmates in honor of the beauty of the world—the truths that do not compromise. At an age so prone to loneliness and overwhelm where internal change is learned, there couldn’t have been a better time for me to learn such a gift— and now I am only a little bit older and much much more comfortable and taking wonderful poetry classes in college and THANKING you for bringing my attention to such a powerful outlet.

Again, I have many things to thank you for, but perhaps the best thanks I can give now comes in the form of Mary Oliver’s reaction to the reading. She sounds very pleased! When she listens, perhaps she hears a poem becoming something else again with a new voice. When I listen, I see your hands in the air as you guide us through the words, and I am comforted again by familiar words in a way that I had forgotten— or rather, absorbed and made subconscious and part of me.

Clearly I have not yet attained Mary Oliver’s beautiful ability to attain exact simplicity in writing! But I hope that this finds you in good health and great happiness, and I will continue writing you over the years until perhaps one day I will be sending you one-word emails that are precise and passionate and appropriately minimalist— and surely I will be thanking you in them still.

As you can imagine, having this image of my former self reflected back to me by Aly, from her current perspective on her own former self, was deeply revelatory and moving. I can’t help but feel thankful to Mary Oliver for facilitating such a communion!

Mary Oliver dove headlong into life’s most profound questions as she stared unflinchingly at grasshoppers, dead foxes, wild geese, and—repeatedly—the sun.

In his essay, “In Her Own Way: Remembering Mary Oliver in Minnesota,” Thomas Smith writes about a workshop he attended with Mary Oliver in Duluth many years ago:

She was in her early 50s then, privately coming to terms with difficult personal issues Dream Work hinted at but stopped short of making explicit.  Her style was unfussily neat, outdoorsy.  I thought there was something of the fox in her countenance, a shy yet cunning elusiveness well-practiced in avoiding traps—not furtive or evasive exactly, but delicately wary and cautious, not willing to come close enough to be what one could call ‘personal.’ She had dignity, gravitas, and did not wear her sense of humor close to the surface. 

It's fascinating to me that by the time I met Mary Oliver in person a couple of decades after Smith did, she seemed to wear her humor on her sleeve (at least in comparison to what I expected based on the seeming reverence of her poems). Hearing Mary Oliver read her work in her own voice changed and deepened my relationship to her words and images, and that feels directly connected to the issues of attention and listening, both exercises we are tackling in the 30-Day Creativity Challenge—as factors in creativity and creative writing.

Later in this newsletter, in the Spark section, you will find a zany and unconventional writing exercise to help you break new ground. I offer that exercise and the rest of this edition of the monthly Writing in the Dark newsletter with love and gratitude—and a quick reminder of format:

1.     Lighting the Craft: What I am learning lately about craft, and my musings about it + any relevant resources.

2.     Fuel: What I’m reading, which will include books, essays, poems, other.

3.     Spark: A writing exercise for you to work on if you like.

4.     Fire & Smoke: Short recap of my own writing life, including the ups, downs, joys, challenges, breakthroughs, and setbacks. And whatever else seems urgent and necessary in a given month.

With love,

Jeannine

Lighting The Craft: What I am Learning

Sometimes, my work as a writer and instructor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health teaches me as much about creative writing as much or more than anything I do or read in my literary life. March has been like that. I’m teaching an SPH class this semester called Writing for Public Health, using the op-ed as a form to teach these graduate students the art of writing with a voice, versus writing in the way they are accustomed to, which is as detached, formal, and, dare I say, dry, as possible. As much as my recent study of narration and child narrators (which you can read here), teaching this course has been so eye opening in terms of the elastic and essential nature of voice. It’s helped me to think more intentionally about the continuum of voice in my own writing, and how important it is to move along that continuum on purpose, while also maintaining awareness and control of the register I’m in regardless of voice. Would love to hear your thoughts on voice, too—especially if you have suggestions on readings!

Fuel: What I’m Reading

Friends! I stepped out of my usual reading zone and took a friend’s advice (thank you, Nancy Hall!) on a novel I’d otherwise never have read—a book with a premise built around video games of all things!, and loved it: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. A few blurbs:

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • Sam and Sadie—two college friends, often in love, but never lovers—become creative partners in a dazzling and intricately imagined world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality. It is a love story, but not one you have read before.

"Delightful and absorbing." —The New York Times  

"Utterly brilliant." —John Green
 
One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, TIME, GoodReads, Oprah Daily

 What I loved about this book was the way in which it introduced me to characters I came to care deeply about, while also immersing me in a world I knew absolutely nothing about—but which, because it was creative, had unexpected overlap with my own life. Also, I loved that its protagonists were young adults who came of age in the late 1990s, so, only about a decade older than my kids. That was fun, to immerse myself in the problems and passions of a younger generation. Highly recommend!

Spark: A Zany Writing Exercise for Breaking New Ground

Have you ever tried to write a micro flash story in the form of a Craigslist ad? Consider this one:

"Perfectly Good Parents - Got lots of use out of these guys over the past 50 years but it's time to move on. Excellent overall condition. Still plenty of life left in them. Will consider trade for newer model, a used car, or an Erector Set in good condition. MUST SEE! Email or call Michael for additional details and pics. $155.00 OBO."

Using the above example as your inspiration, think of something unconventional (or impossible) that you might sell on Craigslist. Or, perhaps it could be something you could sell, but that can be described in such a way as to tell a larger story that lives not in the object or item or service, but five degrees to the left of it.

Keep your efforts short to start with, so that you can perhaps try your hand at several of these in order to see which one(s) you want to develop into something more, or repurpose as something else, or integrate into an existing work.

Above all, have fun. This one is supposed to be fun!

Fire & Smoke: What I’m Writing

Lots of things! Here is a link to my latest craft essay on child narrators, which was a genuine labor of love and which covers most every major aspect of narration in general, including: Persona, Reflection, Restraint, Writing About Trauma, Point of View (from the perspective of how we control the dial on what a narrator knows/understands and what she does not), and Voice.

Here's an excerpt, and you can read the whole thing free over at Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies.

Such unknowing and surprise—arising from an especially elastic and incomplete relationship with language, and, therefore, meaning—are in part what make child narrators so compelling. Child narrators can, in the right circumstances, create effects, powerful ones, that other narrators simply cannot. Of course, not every project, especially within adult literature, calls for a child narrator. Only a few memoirs probably lend themselves to one, in light of how reflective memoirs tend—thanks to the conventions of the genre—to be. As for essays, Merriam-Webster defines them as “analytic” and “interpretive,” two traits not commonly associated with children. And yet, in certain situations, the voice of a child narrator can crack open a personal story—and world—like none other.

And soon, I’ll have an essay coming out in Ilanot Review. I should be able to link to it in the next month.

Meanwhile, the novel. So close, so close. Hoping to be through this last revision no later than end of summer. Please send coffee and magic!

Events

Saturday, April 8

I am so excited to be reading live and in person in my hometown this Saturday night, April 8, the evening before my 55^th birthday. If you’re in the Twin Cities, please consider joining us at 5:30-6:30 pm, The Viewpoint Gallery Lit Salon, with John Jodzio (author, short story writer) reading his work with fellow writers, Jen Bowen, Annette Schiebout, Eric Vroorman, and me!

Saturday, April 15

I am over the moon to be in conversation with Maggie Smith on April 15 in Minneapolis about her new book, You Could Make This Place Beautiful. I CAN’T WAIT and I hope to see some of you there!

Upcoming Writing Classes

Engaging the Sacred explores the intersection and overlap between the sacred and the profane, with Jessica Star Rockers, who writes about faith, addiction, mental health, and healing. This 8-week generative workshop series runs Mondays, April 17 - June 5, 6-7:30pm Central on Zoom, and is designed to honor the fact that each of us holds deep spiritual truths within us. Accessing this inner wisdom requires entering the mystery of our own creativity. This course honors the sacred in the everyday and engages with the holy through ritual, music, and the wisdom of modern prophets. Through this encounter we open ourselves up to our own spiritual abundance. More info and registration here.

In Praise of Wild Spaces: Honoring the Wild in Ourselves & Our Writing with Wendy Brown-Baez will meet for two hours every Wednesday evening for 6 weeks. This course is designed to evoke our personal experiences of wild spaces and write about the ways they alter and heal us. These spaces may be backyard gardens, city parks, or vast canyonlands. We’ll conjure up moments of beauty and transformation. What does it mean to be interconnected with the uncivilized, untamed, ancient, and whole? How can we honor wildness in ourselves? We will also notice damage and harm, like garbage dumps or the effects of wildfire. We’ll explore texts by writers who exemplify being in relationship with the natural world to guide us in writing about our own, such as excerpts from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s lyrical meditations in Braiding Sweetgrass, humorous reflections on falling in love with your surroundings by Hanif Abdurraqib, and motorcycle adventures by Robert Pirsig. We’ll discuss craft elements of sensual details and pacing to create context for tales of wonder and awe. In Praise of Wild Spaces will be generative, interactive, and reflective as we praise the gifts of natural beauty and define ways we reciprocate. Our goal is to find the entry point through the personal to expand into the universal. More info and registration here.

View our whole roster of spring courses here, and more will be announced soon.

Call for Teaching Proposals

Elephant Rock is currently accepting proposals for classes starting May or later. If you would like to teach with us, please reach out. We'd love to hear from you. One of our current teaching artists whose class starts in January says she’s never felt so supported as a teacher. So even if you have lots of questions, we want you to feel encouraged to reach out. We’re interested in building a growth-oriented creative community that is welcoming, expansive, diverse, and inspiring. If that appeals to you, check out our call for teaching proposals.

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