1
I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple -- or a green field -- a place to enter, and in which to feel. Only in a secondary way is it an intellectual thing -- an artifact, a moment of seemly and robust wordiness --wonderful as that part of it is. I learned that the poem was made not just to exist, but to speak --to be company. It was everything that was needed, when everything was needed. .Mary Oliver
2
Attention is the beginning of devotion.Mary Oliver
3
Intellectual work sometimes, spiritual work certainly, artistic work always – these are forces that fall within its grasp, forces that must travel beyond the realm of the hour and the restraint of the habit. Nor can the actual work be well separated from the entire life. Like the knights of the Middle Ages, there is little the creatively inclined person can do but to prepare himself, body and spirit, for the labor to come – for his adventures are all unknown. In truth, the work itself is the adventure. And no artist could go about this work, or would want to, with less than extraordinary energy and concentration. The extraordinary is what art is about.Mary Oliver
4
I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.Mary Oliver
5
I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple--or a green field--a place to enter, and in which to feel.Mary Oliver
6
Winter walks up and down the town swinging his censer, but no smoke or sweetness comes from it, only the sour, metallic frankness of salt and snow.Mary Oliver