Books like House of Light

‘Tell me, what is it you plan to dowith your one wild and precious life?’Despite owning Oliver’s two volume New and Selected Poems, I couldn’t resist snatching up this tiny collection when I stumbled upon it at a library book sale in the fifty cents bin. Although it was her American Primitive that achieved her Pulitzer recognition, House of Light remains my favorite collection of Oliver’s picturesque poetry. After spending a few days in poetic rapture through each word and staggered stanzas, I realized the former owner had discretely placed a small dot next to three different poems in the table of contents. To my joy, these three poems—assumingly singled out for being the ones closest to the former owner’s heart—coincided with my personal favorites as well. In a collection about the unity of all life as it breaches the limits of life and into death, it seemed all the more poignant to find two people across space and time sharing Oliver’s words and, as if in subtle conversation, agreeding upon the words that moved us the most. House of Light, Oliver’s metaphor of the afterlife, glides like a swan into the pond of your heart, sending out little ripples of joy and comfort as she looks towards death without fear but with acceptance and wonderment.Some Questions You Might AskIs the soul solid, like iron?Or is it tender and breakable, likethe wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?Who has it, and who doesn’t?I keep looking around me.The face of the moose is as sadas the face of Jesus.The swan opens her white wings slowly.In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.One question leads to another.Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?Like the eye of a hummingbird?Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?Why should I have it, and not the anteaterwho loves her children?Why should I have it, and not the camel?Come to think of it, what about the maple trees?What about the blue iris?What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?What about the grass?The soul is a theme that floats through this collection as Oliver grapples with the possibility of its existence and the question of what becomes of us when we die. Oliver asks ‘why should I hate it, and not the anteater who loves her children’, and rejects the notion that humans are above any other living thing on earth. She envies the quiet life of flowers in the breeze in Lilies, she spends a day contemplating a mother bear moving down a mountain with ‘her wordlessness, her perfect lovein Spring, and seems to find her inner peace when deep in the wilderness. Out doors, in the company of nature and not people, is when the quiet answers to the universe seem to whisper themselves in her heart. Oliver seems herself a Buddhist as she declares a soul, a light inside all living things, none less beautiful than the rest.\ I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—that the light is everything—that it is more than the sumof each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.\ Taken from the conclusion to The Ponds, this reflects Oliver’s belief in the perfect universal soul, that the light of existence burns away the impurities. Her words are immensely uplifting and empowering as she urges us to maintain a quiet serenity in our hearts. Her words are always so clear, simple and still, like a cool body of water on a sunny day where the rocks on the bottom many feet down can be seen from the surface. Reading her words are like a walk in the forest, refreshing and humbling as they remind you of the things that really matter in life.The Buddha’s Last Instruction “Make of yourself a light,”said the Buddha,before he died.I think of this every morningas the east beginsto tear off its many cloudsof darkness, to send up the firstsignal – a white fanstreaked with pink and violet,even green.An old man, he lay downbetween two sala trees,and he might have said anything,knowing it was his final hour.The light burns upward,it thickens and settles over the fields.Around him, the villagers gatheredand stretched forward to listen.Even before the sun itselfhangs, disattached, in the blue air,I am touched everywhereby its ocean of yellow waves.No doubt he thought of everythingthat had happened in his difficult life.And then I feel the sun itselfas it blazes over the hills,like a million flowers on fire –clearly I’m not needed,yet I feel myself turninginto something of inexplicable value.Slowly, beneath the branches,he raised his head.He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.This light, this purity, speaks to us in every poem. Oliver reminds us to be good to one another, to respect the world around us, and to humble oneself in its immense beauty and mysteries. We are each insignificant, just a speck in all this vastness, yet we are also ‘of inexplicable value’ at the same time. We must accept love and give love, we must try to be a light, because a light can spread and cover the world, comforting and improving the lives of all those it touches.SingaporeIn Singapore, in the airport,A darkness was ripped from my eyes.In the women’s restroom, one compartment stood open.A woman knelt there, washing somethingin the white bowl. Disgust argued in my stomachand I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket. A poem should always have birds in it.Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and gaudy wings.Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees.A waterfall, or if that’s not possible, a fountainrising and falling.A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem. When the woman turned I could not answer her face.Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together, andneither could win.She smiled and I smiled. What kind of nonsense is this?Everybody needs a job. Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.But first we must watch her as she stares down at her labor,which is dull enough.She is washing the tops of the airport ashtrays, as big ashubcaps, with a blue rag.Her small hands turn the metal, scrubbing and rinsing.She does not work slowly, nor quickly, like a river.Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird. I don’t doubt for a moment that she loves her life.And I want to rise up from the crust and the slopand fly down to the river.This probably won’t happen.But maybe it will.If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it? Of course, it isn’t.Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but onlythe light that can shine out of a life. I meanthe way she unfolded and refolded the blue cloth,The way her smile was only for my sake; I meanthe way this poem is filled with trees, and birds.This is such a moving poem (one of the three singled out with a dot in the Table of Contents) and is unique in this collection, being an incredible humanizing poem as it turns a eye of pity on our species instead of an eye of wonder towards nature. It is a perfect example of Oliver remembering the Buddha’s words, to not look down on others with disgust and remember that a ‘light can shine out of a life’ and that we all value our own existence, regardless of where in the social standings it falls. We watch Oliver chastise herself for her initial disgust, her initial pretentions against the lower classes of society, and learn to love the smiling face.Death is a constant companion lurking behind each rock and tree in Oliver’s poems. Yet she never applies a foreboding tone, but instead looks at it as the natural course. A flower never fears its demise, so why should we. Her impressions of death reshape as the collection progresses, often asking if there is a life on the other side, often viewing it as a void or then a darkness, yet finally, in White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field, Oliver reveals to be pure brilliant beauty. To merely give the final few lines that I wish to highlight, instead of the entire poem, would be an insult.\ Coming down out of the freezing skywith its depths of light,like an angel, or a Buddha with wings,it was beautiful, and accurate,striking the snow and whatever was therewith a force that left the imprint of the tips of its wings — five feet apart —and the grabbing thrust of its feet,and the indentation of what had been runningthrough the white valleys of the snow —and then it rose, gracefully,and flew back to the frozen marshesto lurk there, like a little lighthouse,in the blue shadows —so I thought: maybe death isn't darkness, after all,but so much light wrapping itself around us — as soft as feathers —that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking,and shut our eyes, not without amazement,and let ourselves be carried,as through the translucence of mica,to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow,that is nothing but light — scalding, aortal light —in which we are washed and washedout of our bones.\ What a phenomenal depiction of death, as a white owl that silently snatches us from life. Death is not to be feared, it is a comforting light, warm like a heavy blanket, in which we are ‘washed out of our bones.’ How can one fear the end when viewing it like this?This collection is breathtakingly beautiful, and probably my favorite of all Oliver’s works (although Dream Work has a few favorite poems). Death and the soul are discussed with such delicate, simple phrases of supreme potency that will wash the readers heart and soul in order to make it glow with the light of the Buddha. Mary Oliver is a national treasure.5/5Five A.M. in the PinewoodsI'd seentheir hoofprints in the deepneedles and knewthey ended the long night under the pines, walkinglike two muteand beautiful women towardthe deeper woods, so I got up in the dark andwent there. They cameslowly down the hilland looked at me sitting under the blue trees, shylythey steppedcloser and staredfrom under their thick lashes and even nibbled some damptassels of weeds. Thisis not a poem about a dream,though it could be. This is a poem about the worldthat is ours, or could be.Finallyone of them — I swear it! — would have come to my arms.But the otherstamped sharp hoof in thepine needles like the tap of sanity,and they went off together throughthe trees. When I wokeI was alone, I was thinking:so this is how you swim inward,so this is how you flow outward,so this is how you pray.