Honoring Mary Oliver

Today, January 17, 2019, "beloved poet and bard of the natural world" Mary Oliver passed away.



She is well-known for the last two lines in this poem.

I just thought permies would want a space held here to honor and share about her.

From the Mary Oliver Facebook page (photo by reader Jessica):

She was an elegant artist who enriched our perception. So many "artists" will pass and be forgotten, she will live in our increased appreciation of the beauty that we have been given.

I was working on a hydraulic cylinder today. Can this be made private or I'm going to lose my man card immediately.

Mary Oliver was one of the great bards, she has gone to be in the company of her peers, She will be missed greatly.

Tj Jefferson wrote:
...I'm going to lose my man card immediately.

It's way too late Brother.

I feel the same way though.

This is a lovely balm right now.


(From Mary Oliver's Facebook page - this post.)

Tj Jefferson wrote:She was an elegant artist who enriched our perception. So many "artists" will pass and be forgotten, she will live in our increased appreciation of the beauty that we have been given.

I was working on a hydraulic cylinder today. Can this be made private or I'm going to lose my man card immediately.

Man card fully intact as far as I am concerned. My family has always done published poetry, and I mean the men in the family too.

In school a teacher asked us to do some poetry, and so I wrote one about my grandfather from days of old, a story about him felling trees by axe, and withdrawing the wood by teams of horses. She called me to her desk after the class had dismissed and said in her 20 year career it was the best poem she had ever read.

I say this not in boasting, but to say, poetry packs a punch! In religious circles, the Psalms are often quoted, and those are poems in the orginal language, and then sung with music. And how many of us today can remember hymns from church...again poems.

As for men and poems...my Great Uncle worked in the oil industry early in its infancy and invented, and eventually made great wealth from grease boiled in a vaccum since it made it tasteless, odorless, and bacteria free...he invnted...Petroleum Jelly, also called Vasoline. YET if you do a google search for Erastus Johnson, his biography barely notes that...just that he was an inventor....what he is best known for, is being a poet...or exactly...writing a hymn.

TJ...man card very much intact!