Ideas, opinions, and personal essays from respected writers, thinkers, and activists. A project of Beacon Press, an independent publisher of progressive ideas since 1854.
In celebration of National Poetry Month, Beacon Press is giving you a chance to win autographed copies of Mary Oliver's books. VISIT BEACON.ORG FOR MORE DETAILS.
One winner will receive signed copies of New and Selected Poems, Volume Two; Thirst; and Swan; and a poster featuring a poem from Swan.
Three winners will receive a signed copy of Swan and a poster.
Five winners will receive a poster.
If you love Mary Oliver's poetry, then enter our drawing!
We'll take entries starting 9 a.m. EST April 12 and ending at 5 p.m. EST April 30, 2012. You may enter one time per day. Drawing is open to U.S. residents only. Winners will be chosen at random from all entries received and will be notified the week of April 30. TO ENTER, VISIT BEACON.ORG FOR MORE DETAILS. Good luck!
In honor of Poetry Month, Beacon Press will give away five posters featuring a poem from Sonia Sanchez's Morning Haiku, now available in paperback. Enter once a day before noon EST Friday, April 29. The poster features the poem:
4 haiku (for Nubia)
1.
Telephone wires sang her voice over soft sister laughter
2.
you held us with summer stained smiles of hope
3.
i hold your breath today...you sail home across the ocean
4.
i see you Nubia walking your Mississippi walk God in your hands.
At the end of January, Mary Oliver gave a reading at Emory University. For those among us who had the great joy of seeing her, and for the rest of us who were unable to be there, here is a video of her reading three poems at that event: "Tom Dance's Gift of a White Bark Pinecone," "Wild Geese," and "Peonies."
In honor of National Poetry Month, Beacon Press will give away five signed copies of Mary Oliver's Swan: Poems and Prose Poems.
For details and to read a poem from the book, visit MaryOliver.Beacon.org. You can enter once a day between now and Friday, April 15, at noon EST.
Beacon Press is giving away five signed copies of Mary Oliver's Swan: Poems and Prose Poems.
For details and to read a poem from the book, visit MaryOliver.Beacon.org. You can enter once a day between now and Friday, April 15, at noon EST.
All our lives, at least seasonally, the redbird sings, and the oriole and the wren, and in April the ponds are reliably loud with the singing of frogs, and on long winter afternoons the snow-heavy wind whistles in the pines. But our own voices, the particular voices of those who are dear or important to us-- or both-- vanish utterly at the end of the season of life. And how thoroughly also are the sounds of a certain place gone when we visit it no more, though visual joys, sometimes with great clarity, may remain in the mind.
In Rajastan, in India, a man, a woman, and a child were singing outside a restaurant; I can still see them in their vibrant gypsy clothes, the man holding a stringed instrument somewhat like a guitar, but smaller and shaped differently, rather like a gourd. But I cannot hear anymore their loud brisk, joyful singing, a strange and powerful performance. How can this be, that the eyes can keep so many pictures, and the ears have no such reliable and comforting memory? It was perhaps the most exciting music I had ever heard; I think I might have followed it anywhere; but we drove on to the next town, and now in my ears there is nothing.
Of course, the ears are not always quite so empty as I describe them in this story. One can remember voices and almost hear them again a little, especially the intonation of a familiar voice at some pitch of emotion, angry, or frightened, or tender. But for me, at least, it's a few syllables thrust into the air, and they are hard to hold onto.
Many years ago a friend and I used to go to the Old Met in New York, two or three nights a week sometimes. We would stand in the lobby and wait, and sure enough some svelte couple would come dashing out at the end of Act One, to a dinner or a party perhaps, and we-- poor but audacious-- would ask them to give us their ticket stubs. We were never refused, and invariably they were good seats: first floor, down front. Tebaldi, Tucker, Warren, De los Angeles! And then Tebaldi and the others sang at the Met no more, sang no more anywhere.
Well, the truth is that I wish I could live those years again, and enter into the presence of those live performances that meant so much to me. But I do not need to suffer the absence of their voices: technology, while it has invented some horrendous things, can claim much good magic also. So I can hear Tebaldi again. I can hear Dylan Thomas telling in his wondrous voice about a long-ago Christmas day. I can hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaiming that he had seen the promised land. What if that voice had vanished irretrievably-- I think we would feel by that much less the long struggle up the mountain. As in history, as in art, so in life. Oh, what if one had no kept record of the voice of someone loved and now gone? What an extra dish of sorrow that would be.
For there is something heard in the actual voice that cannot be accrued from the printed page, though we read with care and excitement, even with a real falling-into-it passion. There is simply no "connect" as there is between listener and speaker. That, at its best, is almost touch. Nuances unfelt on the page hang in the air. So. Though I am an old-fashioned sort of person, who knows only the kind of blackberries that grow on bushes (for which my friends berate me), I can't deny my own joy and appreciation at the salvation of voices otherwise vanished into the unknowable darkness.
Therefore, this second CD. I join the world. And ponder this fantasy sometimes-- that one day technology will find a place in the dark air and bring back to us the voices of Keats, Shelley, Whitman, Emerson, Li Po, Rumi, Homer-- anyone anyone wants to hear. Who knows. . .
In honor of National Poetry Month, Beacon Press will give away five signed copies of Mary Oliver's Swan: Poems and Prose Poems.
For details and to read a poem from the book, visit MaryOliver.Beacon.org. You can enter once a day between now and Friday, April 15, at noon EST.
For updates on Mary Oliver's appearances, new publications, and media, Like Mary Oliver on Facebook.
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Beacon Broadside, a project of Beacon Press, is an online venue for essays, news items, and dispatches from respected writers, thinkers, and activists about our times.
