Mary Oliver's House of Light
Poetic Reminders of Beauty in Darkness
Apr 18, 2009 Theresa Ann White
House of Light, an early collection by Mary Oliver, paints Whitmanesque sketches empowered with the rhetorical and the metaphorical.
House Style
As with her other poetry volumes, Oliver crafts her poetic work with two primary ingredients: clarity and sparseness. Parable is her device. Interpretation is up to the reader, who can perceive or not, experience an “aha!” moment or turn the page. And again, nature and its denizens becomes the central trope, the joyful observation of Oliver in poem after praise-filled poem.
The poems in this volume overflow with appearances of water, that ancient metaphor for consciousness and eternity. Her work is awash with the writer’s own questioning, as in “The Notebook,” when she wonders aloud about the value of writing and words when compared to being and doing.
Illuminating the Natural Balance
Mary Oliver, when she is accused of creative imperfection, is cast as an asocial denizen of the human world. Her rare critics complain about the lack of humanity in her work; they are not satisfied with the poet’s lyrical concentration with nature.
That she doesn’t blur her words with the accent of another human – the mischief or agony or joy of partnership – is a quaint and repetitive gripe that sounds petty in light of her accomplishments. It can be attributed to readers who perceive their world through one lens only, and thus find the worldview of Oliver an isolated one.
However, Oliver’s poetry gives us an almost total immersion in the world of living and dying. This focus is most apparent in House of Light where natural balances are illuminated without making the ego the point of departure.
Mystery and the Heart
House of Light vibrates with the daily activity of non-humans: geese, owls, teal, snapping turtles, pipefish. Oliver is not dismissing the human. She places our species on a par with its fellow creatures. Nonetheless, Oliver's poetic universe is never distant from the “heart.”
From the opening poem onward, this Pulitzer Prize winning poet invites thought. The short poems act as parables, providing clues but no answers. Oliver leaves it to the reader to search and discover a response. She asks that most abstract of questions: ‘What has a soul?’ and invites reflection from readers with these lines: “Why should I have it and not the anteater / who loves her children?”
No matter whether primal fear intrudes or cruel death comes, Oliver keeps reminding us that in the darkness, there’s beauty. Consider this excerpt from the poem "Snake":
Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled –
to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking
into the white fire of a great mystery.
Reference:
Oliver, Mary. House of Light. Boston: Beacon Press, 1990.
Mary Oliver
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