Poetry Friday--Mary Oliver

I was browsing the Poetry Foundation website and stumbled across the poetry best sellers lists. The list entitled "Contemporary Best Sellers" was a real eye-opener--of the top ten titles, Mary Oliver's books held 5 spots, including number one, Evidence. This April '09 release is not yet in our collection, but I wrote up an order card, so please check the "new books" shelves in a few weeks. Just to put all this in perspective, Evidence, when I checked Barnes & Noble, was ranked as 6,688. It may be a poetry best seller, but it's by no means a blockbuster! Still, the fact that she owns 7 out of 30 spots on the poetry "Contemporary Best Sellers" list is phenomenal and allows Oliver to make a living through her writing. (I am SO envious!)

In honor of Mary Oliver's outstanding hold on the list, I'd like to share a poem from # 28 on the list, Blue Iris: Poems and Essays [811.54 OLI].

Freshen, the Flowers, She Said

So I put them in the sink, for the cool porcelain
    was tender,
and took out the tattered and cut each stem
    on a slant,
trimmed the black and raggy leaves, and set them all--
    roses, delphiniums, daisies, iris, lilies,
and more whose names I don't know, in bright new water--
    gave them

a bounce upward at the end to let them take
    their own choice of position, the wheels, the spurs,
the little sheds of the buds. It took, to do this,
    perhaps fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes of music
    with nothing playing.

Love those last two lines! And, you can tell Oliver is writing from experience--unless giving the flowers "a bounce upward at the end" is something you have done before, you'd never think of writing a line like that. And, of course, it is a fabulously effective line!

The Poetry Friday Round-Up for this week is being held at The Boy Reader.