Fragments From Floyd

Wife is off today-- it will be a day of errands and put-off chores. We slept in this morning, brushing aside the dog's faithful and precise attempt to wake us as usual at 3:50. And so now it is going on 7:00 It feels as if the day is half gone and I will never catch up with it, as if I've come into a performance ten bars after the beginning and cannot pick up the melody or remember which instrument it was that I intended to play. Carry on without me.

It is not that I have nothing to say this morning, but too much. There are still reverberations from Campbell I am processing and one of those threads of thought gained a boost just last night.

To back up: While at the Folk School a few weeks ago, I was discussing my writing past and hopes with Elizabeth, with whom I share a common interest in nature writing. She had brought a couple of boxes of her books from home for her class to peruse. I was familiar with or owned about half of them. "And of course you've read Mary Oliver" she said, and began to move on to the next author in the stack.

"No, I confess I have not read nor ever heard of Mary Oliver" I admitted.

And from that lead she began to compare this poet to Annie Dillard and Hopkins and Wendell Berry and others. She described them, and herself, as "ecstatic writers". We never quite resolved what constitutes an "ecstatic" compared to a "mystic" or "aesthete"; but to make her point she pulled me away from my classmates who were busily completing a project in the classroom. She read to me several of Mary Oliver's poems outside the studio. And I was blown away. And I consider myself an ecstatic writer as well (about which we will talk further in future).

So. After the week after Campbell, I went to my writer's group on Monday two weeks ago. No one from my little group remembered I had gone as I had not talked about it much beforehand. When it came my turn to read, I selected something I had written in my week at the Folk School. And my friend Jayne said afterward "Oh that so reminds me of the writing of the poet Mary Oliver!" Small world. Last night she brought me six books of the writer's poetry and prose. I look forward to total immersion over the "holiday" and weekend which I will spend alone with Ms. Oliver.

I highly recommend reading at least one of Mary Oliver's poems on this page. All I can say is "Yes".