Felicity: Poems

See complete, original review here: herewearegoing.wordpress.com/2016/03/06/reading-ten-februaryish-reads

I am only just beginning to read poetry on a regular basis after many years of not having done so. In the long ago it was Erica Jong and Sylvia Plath and Allen Ginsberg and Frank O’Hara and Dorothy Parker and Edna St. Vincent Millay and Patti Smith and Rimbaud. The theme of this slim volume is love, of the romantic and nature varieties. I am not much a believer in romantic love – its categorization outside and over and above other loves – especially lately I am annoyed by the cultural insistence on its primacy – and nature I can take or leave as well, I refer smog and city sounds, so, perhaps I am the wrong person to talk about this book. On the other hand, Oliver’s facility with language, the spare beauty of her imagery, quite stunning. But then again, given my general ignorance about poetry (I am studying now) and love (I am a life-failure and no amount of study will remedy that, this I have accepted), don’t listen to me about poetry. Borrowed from library. (Still have it, actually, plan to renew all five allowed times as I continue to re-read, examine, think – because, it’s poetry.)

For some reason, FELICITY didn't quite appeal to me as much as other Mary Oliver poetry collections have. And I think it has more to do with personal opinion, since other readers loved it enough to give 5 stars. For me, I guess I prefer her nature poems. They're more thought-provoking, awe-inspiring, and breathtaking. But her love poems are good nonetheless, written as usual in Mary's unique perspective - one of inner strength and peace, quiet joy and vivacious grace. Her insights on any topic are true treasures, and we're lucky to still have her around today to share her wisdom and observations with us.

If you're new to Mary Oliver's work, I'd recommend starting with EVIDENCE, RED BIRD, or either of her two New and Selected Poems volumes. I found those collections to be more impactful, but FELICITY does have its moments of beauty and brilliance.

Favorites: "The World I Live In," "Whistling Swans," "Storage," "That Little Beast," "Everything That Was Broken," "The Pond"

Mary Oliver’s latest collection is a slim volume, full of delight, delicate ruminations on the natural world, as well as a celebration of love and its light and joyful nature. This is a collection to savour as her words dance merrily across these topics, imparting a sense of wonder.
She still turns her gaze to nature as in the witty ‘Roses’:
“Wild roses,” I said to them one morning. “Do you have the answers. And if you do, would you tell me?”
The roses laughed softly. “Forgive us,” they said. “But as you can see, we are just now entirely being roses.”
But this is a collection about love, and some of the most resonant poems are about that happy state such as. ‘How do I Love you?’: “Like this, and like this and no more words now.”

Or ‘Except for the Body’: Except for the body, of someone you love, including all its expressions in privacy and public, trees are the most beautiful forms on earth ...”

And in ‘Not Anyone Who Says’ there’s an awareness that one doesn’t choose caution in love, it’s something entirely other: “Those lovers who didn’t choose at all but were, as it were, chosen by something invisible and powerful and uncontrollable ... only those know what I’m talking about, in this talking about love.”

These poems are very shallow and poems for people who don't ordinarily read a lot of poetry. There are no layers of imagery here or complexity. Although I don't like poems that are incomprehensible, I also don't like poems like these that are so easy to read that they are not even worth a second reading. There's nothing to interpret, nothing challenging about them.

I read tons of poetry and these are some of the most simple-minded poems I've ever read. They belong on drugstore cards. This isn't literary poetry.

Oliver does not dive into nature like usual, but instead writes love poems here. Her style is so different, I would barely know it’s her. They are short, sometimes cryptic, but generally always include her way of inserting universal truth into the smallest observations. At this point, I’d rank this in the lower third of her books for deciding which ones to re-read. But there may be something here I’m not seeing just yet so consider my rating provisional. I do love the way each poem is like a moment of tenderness seen through a sheer curtain that obscures everything but the intent of the people on the other side. “I don’t want to lose a single thread/ from the intricate brocade of this happiness./ I want to remember everything./ Which is why I’m lying awake, sleepy/ but not sleepy enough to give it up./ Just now, a moment from years ago:/ the early morning light, the deft, sweet/ gesture of your hand/ reaching for me.” Grade: B

I have Mary Oliver's latest poembook Felicity out of the library. Hm. What to say? There are many felicities in the book! But quite often (and perhaps this is permissible in a poet of such notable accomplishment), she seems to be basking in the glow of her own expertise: the poems are easy and effortless without being wholly satisfying. There's no sense of a hard-fought victory; she seems, if I may use the shopworn phrase, to be resting on her laurels.

There is an elegy to the Episcopal monk-bishop Tom Shaw which, while heartfelt and emotionally potent, seems esthetically facile. (I suspect it is the partial record of an actual conversation.) There is a sequence of love poems which we venture to say would never have seen the light of publication did they not come from the usually able hand of a poet as revered as Oliver. (Even here, there are flashes of wit and dexterity that make the reader smile.) The product seems slight (a complaint that some reviewers lodged against her previous collection A Thousand Mornings) -- still, one cannot deny those very real moments of beauty, like stabs of nostalgia latent in our favourite music.

On the five-star scale, I dither between three and four, inclining toward generosity, as I value Mary Oliver's magnanimous and loving witness in this often quite cynical world.