[Jeanne]

I'm new to this list and have been enjoying sampling some of your discussions.

I have several of Mary Oliver's books and have enjoyed her
rapturous nature poems. But I've noticed she's not always
included in poetry anthologies. Why is this do you think?

Jeanne

[Gary Keenan]

Jeanne,
Mary Oliver, like many prolific poets, has a somewhat uneven reputation. See Joan Houlihan's latest Boston Comment column on WebDelSol.com for the lesser view of her work. I happen to enjoy Mary Oliver rather more than Joan does. As to why Oliver is not more widely anthologized, perhaps she or her publishers have not granted permissions.

Or perhaps the problem is a general alienation from the natural world, which makes Oliver's poems sound dated and weakly imagined. Or that, as Houlihan suggests, Oliver is rewriting the same poem over and over, and editors have tired of that poem. Or that her best poems are too long for anthology format, or too uncompromising in subject matter and voice.

I like a good anthology but find they are rare, and far prefer to get a large dose from a single poet than samples from many, unless the anthology has a very strong focus, like ballads or Elizabethan lyrics, or a jolly editor like Palgrave.

Best regards,
Gary

Originally posted by Jeanne:
I'm new to this list and have been enjoying sampling some of your discussions.

I have several of Mary Oliver's books and have enjoyed her
rapturous nature poems. But I've noticed she's not always
included in poetry anthologies. Why is this do you think?

Jeanne

[MacArthur]

By all means, let us praise Mary Oliver-- more poets should model themselves on her, if they are going to write that kind of accessible Free Verse. She does it legitimately-- you can pretty much look at any MO poem and decide whether you think it's fresh or stale, tight or slack, significant or trite, competant or fumbled. That's a kind of integrity...she throws herself on the mercy of her audience-- but at least the attempt is there, and it's easy to tell when she has failed. She has no Academic or Post-Modernist postures to hide behind.

For Gary, I wanted to say something I never got around to saying on another thread: the above is largely true of Ashbery too, and to his credit. His is a sort of honest Avant-Gardeisme...and curiously old-fashioned. If you accept his premises, there are at least some loose guidelines you can use to judge his individual poems, and the efforts of others so-inspired. This is a lot different from some Post-Modernist phony, who plays on the reluctance of the contemporary audience to condemn gestures the audience isn't quite sure it understands.

[Michael Juster]

I have to dissent here. Ashbery is as dishonest as they come, a poet who uses distracting veneers to mask his hollowness. While I agree that Oliver is more "honest' than Ashbery, I do not understand her following. I heard her read at Harvard and was baffled by the large number of fans who who went into ecstasy at what seemed like repetitive banalities to me. If you must read recent American free verse, it seems to me that Richard Hugo or Linda Pastan would be better objects of attention. Even better yet would be some of the foreign poets--Montale, for instance.

[cgaver]

Alicia just posted a lead to an article entitled, "Poets Who Publish Too Much" at
http://webdelsol.com/f-bostoncomment.htm

that includes Mary Oliver and her work. You'll find more commentary about the piece under "The Discerning Eye's" thread header for Eratosphere.

Michael, your comment about Oliver's trance-like reception made me think of commentary I've heard and discussions I've participated in in regards to performance poetry vs. poets better read on the page. Fascinating all the permutations of this subculture of ours...