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If you love poetry, the Library System will be offering the
following programs during the month of April:
West Atlantic
Avenue Branch:
Tuesdays, April 8, 15, 22 & 29, 2:30 p.m. Adult
Poetry Workshop
Award-winning poet Stacie Kiner will conduct a four-week poetry
workshop. Participation limited to 10. (90 min.) Sign up at the
reference desk. Preregister
Main Library:
Martes, 15 de abril, 6:30 p.m.
(Tuesday, April 15, 6:30 p.m.)
Todos Somos Poetas (We Are All Poets – In Spanish)
Deje que su imaginación le lleve y participle en este taller de
escritura de poemas con la profesora Amparo Florez. Espacio
limitado, favor de registrarse. (2 hr.)
Bring your
inspiration and participate in this poetry writing seminar by
professor Amparo Flórez. Pre-register. (2 hr.)
Wellington
Branch:
Wednesday, April 30, 6:30 p.m. Adult
Wellington’s Poetry Discussion Group
Engage in a provocative discussion of several published poems
written by various poets. Pick up copies of poems at the
information desk. (2 hr.) Preregister. |
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Wild Geese
By Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things. |
The Soft Animal of
our Lives:
On Mary Oliver's, "Wild Geese"
By Stacie M. Kiner, West Atlantic Avenue Branch
Mary Oliver, whose work has garnered both a Guggenheim and
Pulitzer Prize, is more than just our "indefatigable guide to
the natural world," as poet Maxine Kumin has written.
Oliver has bridged the distance between writing solely about
exclusively pacific, natural milieu and settings of a more
personal nature. Oliver, as evidenced in the poem, "Wild Geese,"
is capable of sustaining a discourse on both the natural and
personal worlds which, combined, compose a greater picture.
In "Wild Geese," Oliver is beseeching, as opposed to gently
reminding us that no, we do not have to be good, we do not have
to "walk on our knees for a hundred miles through the desert
repenting." You simply, merely, have to "let the soft animal of
your body love what it loves." |
