Wild and precious life

Mission statement takes on new meaning with poet Mary Oliver’s visit

Sarah Kehoe - kehoesm@plu.edu

mast a&e reporter

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Wild Hope Project inspirer Mary Oliver read her work on the evening of April 22 in Lagerquist Hall as a presentation of Earth Day.

PLU students have run across the Wild Hope question taken from Oliver’s poem, “Summer Day,” “What will you do with your wild and precious life?” during the application process when they had to answer it for the application essay.

Since then they have heard it many times throughout their academic careers around campus, splattered on bulletin boards and signs.

Yet how many students have truly grasped this or know the other work from the woman who wrote it and her love of the outside world?

“My work is loving the world, standing still and learning to be astonished,” said Oliver as she read from her poem, “Messenger.”

Oliver has often been compared with Emily Dickenson in the past for her solitude and interior monologues as her quiet observation of nature stirs her imagination.

“Her life revolves around her need to produce poems,” said assistant professor of economics and member of Wild Hope Lynn Hunnicutt. “You can tell that she is so focused on them and builds her life around them.”

She is in tune with the intricate details of the world, making the simplest piece of scenery special and meaningful—a rare gift that she remembers always possessing.

“I would always leave the house saying, ‘I’m going in’ and enter the house saying, ‘I’m going out,’” Oliver said. “If you love something, you pay attention to it.”

“Mary Oliver is a remarkable poet who has used her art and her skill to help thousands if not millions of people encounter and think about nature and their being a significant species within nature,” said associate professor of religion and Wild Hope member Samuel Torvend.

Oliver’s poems are inspired from the rawness of the nature that surrounds her and each poem challenge readers to look at their lives and the world around them a little differently.

“I look at the world as a scientist,” said Jill Whitman, chair of the geosciences department and member of the Environmental Studies Committee. “Hearing her poetry allowed me to see the world with a different lens.”

Oliver’s poetry ranges from light and humorous, to dark and anguished, covering a range of issues from politics to what she learned from the relationship with her life partner, Molly Malone Cook.

“Molly taught me what real attention is all about,” Oliver read. “That attention without feeling is just reporting, attention with openness and empathy is what matters.”

It is this detail to attention that has given Oliver’s poems a unique and creative twist.

This is evident with the precise details in the poem “Summer Days” which an observation of a grasshopper leads Oliver to contemplate the unexpectedness of death and the value of life.“Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

“I see the PLU mission statement differently after hearing her read the poem,” junior Marit Barkve said. “Before I saw it to be more individual, but now I see it more as what are you going to effect with your life.”

Sophomore Kelly Ryan’s perspective on the mission statement also changed after hearing Oliver.
“I read it out of context when applying it to vocation,” Ryan said. “I thought of it as something that would be happening later versus right now; yet after her reading, I examine it in a more present tense.”

PLU’s Wild Hope Project says on its Web site that the term and theme of ‘wild hope’ is the vocation of our lives now as well as future aspirations.

“Like hope itself, searching for one’s vocation in life focuses on making sense of the world, not just getting to some place that turns out well.. “Also like hope, our vocations are not merely goals out there in the future; we live inside our hopes and vocations, right in them, right now. And the world needs hope.”

This project is beneficial to students as they think about what they enjoy now and what they hope to accomplish in the future.

“Why should we keep keeping asking the question?” Torvend said. “Because relationships, events, and crises shift our perceptions of life in this world. At this moment, we are terribly aware of the precious and fleeting character of life.”

As for Oliver, she plans to continue writing and enjoying nature with her one wild and precious life.