Tuesday
Here a very timely Mary Oliver poem—I’ve shared it in the past—that captures the green wave that is sweeping over Sewanee at the moment. Oliver has a thing about bees, which show up in multiple poems. I think the image of bees diving into flowers captures her own sense of immersing herself, and coating herself, in nature. As she writes in “Plum Trees, “There’s nothing so sensible as sensual inundation.” In other words, there is no dividing line between reason and passion.
This emphasis on poetry’s sensuality reminds me of an Iris Murdoch observation about poetry. When talking about how literature arouses the emotions, Murdoch mentions the importance of physical sensations:
Literature could be called a disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions….I would include the arousing of emotion in the definition of art, although not every occasion of experiencing art is an emotional occasion. The sensuous nature of art is involved here, the fact that it is concerned with visual and auditory sensations and bodily sensations. If nothing sensuous is present no art is present. This fact alone makes it quite different from “theoretical” activities…
I imagine Oliver wholeheartedly agreeing. While she derives spiritual sustenance from nature, she simultaneously emphasizes “the flourishing of the physical body.” For Oliver, there is no separation between the physical and the spiritual realms.
May
May, and among the
miles of leafing,
blossoms storm out of
the darkness—
windflowers and
moccasin flowers. The bees
dive into them and I
too, to gather
their spiritual
honey. Mute and meek, yet theirs
is the deepest
certainty that this existence too—
this sense of
well-being, the flourishing
of the physical
body—rides
near the hub of the
miracle that everything
is a part of, is as
good
as a poem or a
prayer, can also make
luminous any dark
place on earth.