I read Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet, every day.
Category Archive: Mary Oliver
Sometimes breaking the rules is extending the rules.
If I’ve done my work well, I vanish completely from the scene. I believe it is invasive of the work when you know too much about the writer.
Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born.
I always feel that whatever isn’t necessary shouldn’t be in a poem.
I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded.
I have a notebook with me all the time, and I begin scribbling a few words. When things are going well, the walk does not get anywhere; I finally just stop and write.
Poetry isn’t a profession, it’s a way of life. It’s an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.
Writers must… take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems.
It’s very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in the morning and think of something, I write it down. I can’t wait until morning – it’ll be gone.