Dear Reader,
I mentioned yesterday refilling the well after having dipped so deeply from it lately. And guess what I decided was ideal to do the refilling with? Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World. It’s everywhere right now, and when I saw it on YouTube today, I knew that today was the day. But you can also watch it on the PBS website.
I’ve read some of her poetry, not nearly enough, and I’ve read her excellent Poetry Handbook. Obviously, it’s a classic. It was amusing to discover that she wrote it in hopes of never having to teach again, so she could just be left home alone to write at her kitchen table.
She was such a contradiction: she adored nature yet smoked and drank copiously. She was devoted to her friends and yet often preferred to be alone in the woods.
To see the celebrities and other poets who have been so moved by her work, particularly Stephen Colbert, who could not make it through quoting “The Summer Day,” was heartwarming; he reads it to his children every year. I find that lovely and wish I had done the same.
Her story was quite different from what I imagined, and Provincetown as a more or less artist colony was new to me, and now I want to know more. The footage was tantalizing, too!
There were things large and small that absolutely slayed me in the documentary, and I definitely want to watch it again. But what grabbed me most was a line from her Upstream writings: “Attention is the beginning of devotion.”
That’s the notion I’d like to chase today. I wrote the line down as soon as I heard it, and I know I’ve heard it before, but ironically, I haven’t paid it much attention, although I relate to it mightily. (That is an old-fashioned word but, in a sense, so is devotion.)
It’s early, I’m on the sun porch for now, and Word Raccoon is barely invited into this post, but here we are. When I’m not paying attention, she is, so I suppose that’s fair.
Attention is the beginning of devotion.
I have always paid attention. It’s funny how you can be accused of being a dreamer (my name, come on), of not being focused, of not listening when you are always focused, you are always listening. You always see. Just not what others think you ought to.
I’ve been on walks and asked if someone else sees the glimmer on a patch of pebbles, or the way the squirrel has flattened herself when we walk by. I’ve watched too many ants to count. I can spot someone by how they walk; I can imitate their voice; I can predict their cadence and almost what they will say.
For those I am particularly devoted to, I even notice when they get a new sunspot.
You can’t notice everything, though. So what is it that draws the attention in the first place? Hard to say.
Maybe it’s a turn of phrase or a word no one else uses. Maybe it’s the mismatch between words and body language. Maybe it’s the way someone picks up an idea and twirls it in their hand like a globe, capturing it in 360 degrees in a way you’ve not seen before and you just want to be close to see if you can catch how they did that trick.
Devotion.
Attention.
You might not even use a thing from watching the hummingbird dip into your flowers while you think, “Sir, that’s quite enough, and what you are doing seems a little inappropriate.” But someday, you will encounter a poem about the lovely, sweet hummingbird and you will think, “Yeah, but that one guy…”
Those of us who create do sometimes want to be unnoticed. We don’t want attention paid to us so that we can pay attention. Being a stranger means you can take in a conversation; appearing absorbed in your own work while in public means you might catch an unguarded glimpse.
Those are the moments to treasure. But I’m wandering, WR. Why are you letting me do that? I could write reams on this.
This is not a post to write in a morning. This is not a post to write in a day. This is not a post to write in a life.
This is not the post to explore the audacity and agony of being noticed.
There’s a reason people write poems about these things, people!
WR says it’s fine. Some topics we’re allowed to return to, over and over again. Maybe devotion is a bucket pulled up from a well.
(We like the shiny things no one else values in it because, WR says, those people are philistines. What, she says, you can be a philistine about more than just art.)
Isn’t it time for breakfast, she asks. She just wants to save me from embarrassing myself, which she says I am veering perilously close to right now.
Poetry lover or not, I highly recommend the documentary. You may question everything you have done with your “wild and precious life.”
I do not say that lightly. The more people I lose, the more I know this to be true.
And btw, apparently “Flattened Grass” from yesterday’s post wanted to be recorded. Sorry about the AC running in the background; it was recorded on the fly, and alas, only once. Someday I’ll actually practice. But in the meantime…I guess WR just records poems whenever she pleases now. 😂
Drema