Nine years ago Mary Oliver gave a reading at UCLA. I bought two tickets and took R. He hadn’t cared that much for poetry until I read him Oliver’s “The Summer Day”, and the famous last lines, Tell me, what is it you is it you plan to do/ With your one wild and precious life? made him cry.  (Five years later my daughter Brooke would read that poem at his memorial service.) But he was stunned that night in February that every seat in Royce Hall had sold out, that it was like some kind of rock concert. A literary one.

As Nell Scovell wrote in Vanity Fair, “Mary Oliver rolled into Southern California to rock UCLA’s Royce Hall,” and she went on to compare Oliver’s stage presence to Madonna  but without the backup dancers. “She dazzled.” And she did. Serious and funny, modest yet shining, she was our very own rock star. Familiar lines, like lyrics, caused applause to break out over and over.

A poet as rock star. Think about that for a moment. (And if by any chance you haven’t read her go immediately to Google and find some of her poems.) My shelves are filled with her books. I’ve never taught a writing course without reading her poems to my students. She died last week and social media has been filled with eulogies and quotes from her work, her one wild and precious life that she was able to put into words.

 

Someone I loved once gave me

a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

that this too, was a gift. 

– Mary Oliver  “The Uses of Sorrow”