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The River Styx, Ohio, and other poems,
- GenresPoetry
55 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1972
About the author
Mary Oliver
95 books7,581 followersMary Jane Oliver was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her work is inspired by nature, rather than the human world, stemming from her lifelong passion for solitary walks in the wild.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 26, 2019
Published in 1972, Oliver’s second book is expertly crafted and full of the author’s vibrant and quirky intelligence. Still, for the reader familiar with her later books, most of the poems here don’t really sound like herself, that mercilessly devoted observer of people and nature whom we have come to love and to listen to. Sometimes the poem sounds like Millay or Mew, sometimes like Frost or Wendell Berry, but these relentless iambic verses—many of which rhyme--seem too buttoned up, too confined to express the wealth of encounters and surprises that can be found in one of Mary’s walks through the woods.
Still, there's a lot of good stuff here. I like the incisive portraits (“Learning about the Indians,” “Anne,” “Aunt Mary”), the elegies for journeys taken or not taken (“Somewhere in Pennsylvania,”“Passing Through,” ”Mountain Road”), and the poems of mourning, written during the Vietnam War (“Night Watch,” “The Intervals,” “Points of View.”) But I could have mentioned many other poems too; every poem here is worth reading.
The poems that stick in the memory here, though, are the poems Mary writes about walls, how walls are good for limiting our territory, demarcating it as ideal and demure, but how they also wall the wilderness out, increasing its wildness by definition, making it a thing to fear. (Could Mary be thinking of formal rhymed poetry here, a practice she would soon abandon? And—yes—perhaps she is thinking of war too.) There are three or four poems that touch on this theme, but I’ll choose “The Fence” as a representation of them all. It is one of the best, and—besides—it is also a witty criticism of “Mending Wall” written in language much like Frost’s.
THE FENCE
The day the fence was finally in
And I could see to every side
The wire that glittered fierce and thin,
The sturdy posts among the leaves,
I felt a curious change begin
To whisper slyly in my heart
That things were different on my side,
Were cleaner and more civilized
Than the green portico running free.
And though I knew it could not be,
Since only days before I’d walked
Under the trees and could not tell
What leaves were wild, and which were mine,
I felt the notion rise and flare
Like heat about my willing pride.
Who builds a fence about his land
Must bear the burden of those lines,
And lest the sharp whim of a fence
Creat a myth of difference,
Teach love to leap, respect to glide
Oh freely to the other side.
For there’s no wilderness but one,
And no safe place for any life
That fear or fencing ever won.
Under the green and falling light
I walk the borders of my land
and let my thoughts swim into night;
And pray that they should travel far,
Look to the earth both here and there,
Study the wild unpastured stars,
Stare at the dark no fence can hold
And, finally, leave the gate ajar.
June 25, 2022
There's so much bleak nostalgia in this beautiful collection. So many of these poems reflect on futile efforts to find something magical and beautiful, but only being met with loss and grief. I loved it so much.
"And what was I to think of such conclusions—
Pressed to the door, a small and curious child
Eavesdropping on the terrifying world
Of sons and fathers talking of their women?"
- from the poem, "Hattie Bloom"
"Under ten thousand decorated trees
The world is humming strands of Holy Night;
But only war, disaster, and disease
Shine in the patterns of the natural stars.
Christ is in old man in a church pew, weeping
He waits, like common men, to glimpse the light
Trying to make the best of it, we sit"
- from the poem, "Christmas, 1966"
"And what was I to think of such conclusions—
Pressed to the door, a small and curious child
Eavesdropping on the terrifying world
Of sons and fathers talking of their women?"
- from the poem, "Hattie Bloom"
"Under ten thousand decorated trees
The world is humming strands of Holy Night;
But only war, disaster, and disease
Shine in the patterns of the natural stars.
Christ is in old man in a church pew, weeping
He waits, like common men, to glimpse the light
Trying to make the best of it, we sit"
- from the poem, "Christmas, 1966"
February 10, 2018
Many have gone, and think me half a fool
To miss a day away in the cool country.
Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish,
Going to Walden is not so easy a thing
As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult
Trick of living, and finding it where you are.
A beautiful collection. This is some of her earliest work, and it includes a great many layered and distinct pieces. It's a more expansive collection in that it doesn't have a single, definite theme. It runs between her love of the natural world, memory, contemplation, and experience. Despite a few poems that drift into very personal memories which don't hold a strong universal appeal, there are many here that have true depth, and will reward the patient, as well as the repeat, reader.
Though it is easier not to dream,
To bother as the hard years fall,
To take no friend or hope or brother,
How will we know that we have lived
In a world apart from leaves and wind?
To miss a day away in the cool country.
Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish,
Going to Walden is not so easy a thing
As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult
Trick of living, and finding it where you are.
A beautiful collection. This is some of her earliest work, and it includes a great many layered and distinct pieces. It's a more expansive collection in that it doesn't have a single, definite theme. It runs between her love of the natural world, memory, contemplation, and experience. Despite a few poems that drift into very personal memories which don't hold a strong universal appeal, there are many here that have true depth, and will reward the patient, as well as the repeat, reader.
Though it is easier not to dream,
To bother as the hard years fall,
To take no friend or hope or brother,
How will we know that we have lived
In a world apart from leaves and wind?
April 22, 2022
Early Mary Oliver working in Frost mode. Beautiful and threads appear leading to the clarity of voice in later work. I adored.
March 23, 2022
This is one of Mary Oliver’s earliest collections, and the poems in this volume reflect her playfulness and inquisitiveness about life and nature. In the poem “Spring in the Classroom,” she recounts her childhood years at school and how she felt confined while sitting in class with having to learn from a teacher when she really wants to be wild with learning from the natural world. From these early pieces, we see Oliver’s yearnings for nature guiding her vision and quest for knowledge. And in her poem “Answers,” she talks about her immersion in books as leading her to conclude that a greater knowledge awaits her outside in nature: “I sat in the kitchen sorting through volumes of answers\ That could not solve the mystery of trees.”
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December 1, 2019DNF: I thought I could read poetry on my own and learn about it, but I don't have the background for it. There isn't anything wrong with these poems, I just wasn't getting anything out of reading them by myself. Looking for a poetry class!
July 6, 2019
An early volume of poetry by the gifted Mary Oliver ... taunter than later poems, and not so focused on the natural world ... more attuned to American culture and its past ...
May 1, 2022
Wonderful collection
June 20, 2022
I want to frame nearly every poem. I felt so many things. Melancholy and nostalgia, I think, are the two biggest emotions she elicited here, but, like, in a good way.
February 27, 2014
Mary Oliver is wonderful, this collection of poems is simple and straightforward, yet surprisingly cutting, with multiple layers packed densely into the sharp imagery. Mentally stimulating, but also a pleasure to read.
January 1, 2014
The poem on her grandmother, who didn't have much education, really touched my heart.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews