Happy birthday to Mary Oliver, her first since she died earlier this year. She taught us to make an appointment with the page and that we do not have to be good.
She said:
I consider myself kind of a reporter—one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write. For most of my life, I haven’t had the structure of an actual job. When I was very young and decided I wanted to try to write as well as I could, I made a great list of all the things I would never have….
Would not have, because I thought poets never made any money. A house, a good car, I couldn’t go out and buy fancy clothes or go to good restaurants. I had the necessities. Not that I didn’t take some teaching jobs over the years—I just never took any interesting ones, because I didn’t want to get interested. That’s when I began to get up so early in the morning—you know I’m a 5 A.M. riser—so I could write for a couple of hours and then give my employer my very best second-rate energy….
I’ve always wanted to write poems and nothing else. There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you’re working a few hours a day and you’ve got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you’re okay.
(There’s no beach where I live, but there’s sunshine, and I can go outside and get a taco.)