BOOK SPECIAL Overall
Favorite Books of 2016
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3.UPSTREAM
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To read Mary
Oliver is to be read by her — to be made real
by her words, to have the richest subterranean truths of your own experience
mirrored back to you with tenfold the luminosity. Her prose collection Upstream:
Selected Essays is a book of uncommon enchantment,
containing Oliver’s largehearted wisdom on writing, creative work, and the art
of life.
In one particularly satisfying piece from the
volume, titled Of
Power and Time,” Oliver writes:
The working, concentrating artist is an
adult who refuses interruption from himself, who remains absorbed and energized
in and by the work — who is thus responsible to the work… Serious interruptions
to work, therefore, are never the inopportune, cheerful, even loving
interruptions which come to us from another.
[…]
It is six A.M., and I am working. I am
absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must
be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals
without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am
stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My
responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include
mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the
pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive.
If I have a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice
even more if I do not arrive at all.
There
is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success,
to the striver, is worth everything. The most regretful people on earth are
those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power
restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.
For a richer taste of this feast for the
mind, heart, and spirit, see Oliver on how
books saved her life and time,
the artist’s task, and the central commitment of the creative life.
BRAIN PICKINGS
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