by Ali Nuri

Mary Oliver’s Devotions provides a fitting culmination of her life philosophy, her core tenets bound together in one vulnerable place. Ultimately, her work divulges with astute observation the crux of what we are: at once human and animal, at once selfish and full of gratitude, at once perfect and profoundly flawed. The paradoxical balancing act between shameless desire and overwhelming selflessness is deftly traversed through her lush turns of phrase:

For one thing leads to another.
Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.
Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.

And someone’s face, whom you love, will be as a star
both intimate and ultimate,
and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful.

And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper:
oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two
beautiful bodies of your lungs.

Both achingly universal and gut-wrenchingly personal, Oliver simultaneously forces us to confront and entwine the outer world with our inner worlds, where our place among “the family of things” is ascertained only through the intersection of the physical and cerebral realms. Central to her perspective is the interconnectedness of all things, regardless of their tenuous association. The bulk of her work fixated on subjects including identity, mortality, and nature, often blending these vital fascinations within the same poem:

And that’s when it happens—
you see everything
through their eyes,
their joy, their necessity;
you wear their webbed fingers;
your throat swells.
And that’s when you know
you will live whether you will or not,
one way or another,
because everything is everything else,
one long muscle.

Though her lexis and subjects are deceptively simple, her ideas and overwhelming message are incredibly complex. Such morsels of wisdom may only emerge via scathing self-reflection, acceptance of one’s darkness, and the will to strive for unflinching compassion above all else. Her words bestow a brave dogma of openness with the universe, the perils of existence, and the undefinable devotions shared between one another:

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Devotions stands as a quiet meditation on the blameless act of being in a world that is preoccupied with doing. Through the darkest happenings of today’s world, Mary Oliver’s poetry continues to shine brightly and reminds us what it means to be present, appreciative, and most importantly, ourselves.