The Bibliophile's Bookshelf

October 2nd was Random Acts of Poetry Day.

Therefore, this Saturday I’m sharing some of my favorite poems and poets.

Poets I’m sharing include Mary Oliver, Pablo Neruda, William Carlos Williams, and Nikki Giovanni. I’m sharing six poems: I Worried, Sleeping in the Forest, When I Die I Want Your Hands on My Eyes, One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII, Allowables, and The Red Wheelbarrow. I hope you enjoy them!

1. Mary Oliver
   • I Worried: “I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers/flow in the right direction, will the earth turn/as it was taught, and if not how shall/I correct it?/Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,/can I do better?/Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows/can do it and I am, well,/hopeless./Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,/am I going to get rheumatism,/ lockjaw, dementia?/Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing./And I gave it up. And took my old body/and went out into the morning/and sang.
   • Sleeping in the Forest: “I thought the earth/remembered me, she/took me back so tenderly, arranging/her dark skirts, her pockets/full of lichens and seeds. I slept/as never before, a stone/on the riverbed, nothing/between me and the white fire of the stars/but my thoughts, and they floated/light as moths among the branches/of the perfect trees. All night/I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling/with a luminous doom. By morning/I had vanished at least a dozen times/into something better.
2. William Carlos Williams
   • The Red Wheelbarrow: “so much depends/upon/a red wheel/barrow/glazed with rain/water/besides the white/chickens.
3. Nikki Giovanni
   • Allowables: “I killed a spider/Not a murderous brown recluse/Nor even a black widow/And if the truth were told this/Was only a small/Sort of papery spider/Who should have run/When I picked up the book/But she didn’t/ And she scared me/And I smashed her/I don’t think/I’m allowed/To kill something/Because I am/Frightened
4. Pablo Neruda
   • When I Die I Want Your Hands On My Eyes: “When I die I want your hands on my eyes:/I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands/to pass their freshness over me one more time/to feel the smoothness that changed my destiny./I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep,/I want for your ears to go on hearing the wind,/for you to smell the sea that we loved together/and for you to go on walking the sand where we walked./I want for what I love to go on living/and as for you I loved you and sang you above everything,/for that, go on flowering, flowery one,/so that you reach all that my love orders for you,/so that my shadow passes through your hair,/so that they know by this the reason for my song.”
   • One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII: “I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,/or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:/I love you as one loves certain obscure things,/secretly, between the shadow and the soul./I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries/the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,/and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose/from the earth lives dimly in my body./I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,/I love you directly without problems or pride:/I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,/except in this form in which I am not nor are you,/so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,/so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

Mary Oliver is my favorite poet. I recently read The Truro Bear and Other Adventures by Mary Oliver. I especially loved the poems about her dog. She has really beautiful nature poems featured in this book, as well.