The Leaf and the Cloud: A Poem

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Overview

With piercing clarity and craftsmanship, Mary Oliver has fashioned an unforgettable poem of questioning and discovery, about what is observable and what is not, about what passes and what persists. As the U.S. Poet Laureate, Stanley Kunitz, has said: "Mary Oliver's poetry is fine and deep; it reads like a blessing. Her special gift is to connect us with our sources in the natural world, its beauties and terrors and mysteries and consolations." The Boston Globe has called Mary Oliver "a great poet . . . she is amazed but not blinded." And the Miami Herald has said: "The gift of Oliver's poetry is that she communicates the beauty she finds in the world and makes it unforgettable."

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Overview

With piercing clarity and craftsmanship, Mary Oliver has fashioned an unforgettable poem of questioning and discovery, about what is observable and what is not, about what passes and what persists. As the U.S. Poet Laureate, Stanley Kunitz, has said: "Mary Oliver's poetry is fine and deep; it reads like a blessing. Her special gift is to connect us with our sources in the natural world, its beauties and terrors and mysteries and consolations." The Boston Globe has called Mary Oliver "a great poet . . . she is amazed but not blinded." And the Miami Herald has said: "The gift of Oliver's poetry is that she communicates the beauty she finds in the world and makes it unforgettable."

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
Oliver's seven-part book-length poem takes its title from Ruskin: "Between the earth and man arose the leaf. Between the heaven and man came the cloud." Oliver's speaker meditates on her own mortality, feels her body "rising through the water/ not much more than a leaf," and declares that she "believes in God,/ though she has no word for it." Wandering wide-eyed through poem, book and world, she can seem too obviously faux na ve, more stentorian than Marianne Moore-like: "my mother, alas, alas,/ did not always love her life,/ heavier than iron it was/ as she carried it in her arms/ from room to room,/ oh, unforgettable!" Indeed, many of the interrogatives here seem to come right out of a children's book ("Did you know that the ant has a tongue/ with which to gather in all that it can/ of sweetness?// Did you know that?") as do the apostrophes: "and will you find yourself finally wanting to forget/ all enclosures, including// the enclosure of yourself, o lonely leaf." Oliver at her best is less self-consciously playful, whether considering "the mosquito's/ dark dart,/ flushing and groaning" or "the big owl, shaking herself/ out of the pitchpines." But preciousness mars the volume in section after section, undermining fresh utterances--"I will sing for the Jains and their careful brooms./ I will sing for the salt and the pepper in their little towers on the clean table"--with a cartoonlike silliness: "I will sing for the two coyotes who came at me with their strong teeth/ and then, at the last moment, began to smile," or worse, with banal abstractions: "I will sing for what is in front of the veil, the floating light./ I will sing for what is behind the veil-light, light, and more light." While the speaker begins many of the lines in humility, she inevitably gets caught up in the wonder and frenzy of her own creations, making this book seem more like an ecstatic one-off than a substantial new collection from a Pulitzer Prize winner. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|
KLIATT
Mary Oliver opens with the line "Welcome to the silly, comforting poem." Only the "comforting" part of the description is true. This wonderful book-length poem is grand in scope, ambitious, at places almost biblical in tone and focus. "Then the grass curls or breaks, or we cut it. / What does it matter? / Do you think the grass is growing so wild and thick / for its own life? / Do you think the cutting is the ending, and not, also, / a beginning?" Only Oliver identifies so completely with the world and offers poetry from her unique perspective. "And now she's nothing / except for mornings when I take a handful of words / and throw them into the air / so that she dashes up against us in the darkness..." In this meditative piece Oliver acknowledges that "Maybe the world, without us, / is the real poem." The seven parts of this poem, two parts of which have been included in sequential The Best American Poetry editions, combine love and death, this world and the next: "My mother / was the blue wisteria, / my mother / was the mossy stream out behind the house... / I bury her / in a box / in the earth / and turn away." Oliver's vision is sad and comforting and honest. "This is the poem of goodbye. / And this is the poem of don't know. / My hands touch the lilies / then withdraw..." No wonder she has won so many awards and is regarded among our finest poets. The Leaf and the Cloud is a new personal favorite. Category: Poetry. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2000, Perseus, Da Capo, 55p., , Barre, MA
More Reviews (3) Fewer Reviews
Library Journal
"Welcome to the silly, comforting poem." So begins Oliver's new book-length poem in seven parts. The opening can be misleading. Those who are familiar with Oliver's work, though, will not be put off by the casual, almost flippant tone or the simplicity of language. They know that this, too, will be a smart, wonderful meditation, a rumination through and about Nature and death, a glimpse into our deepest, quietest selves: "I am a woman sixty years old and of no special courage./ Everyday--a little conversation with God, or his envoy/ the tall pine, or the grass-swimming cricket." Oliver has a knack for opening doors onto corridors that have long been closed off and forgotten. Few readers will be newcomers to Oliver's poems; she has won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award and deserves the heady reputation that goes with them. Her new work is a delight, at once exactly what her readers will expect and deserves yet amazingly fresh. Essential for any serious contemporary poetry collection.--Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
San Diego Union Tribune
Reading one of Oliver's poems is like stepping back into the Eden of childhood.
Kirkus Reviews
Those familiar with Oliver's work will not be caught off guard by her latest, essentially one long piece comprised of seven poems. Each is further broken down into numbered sections in which long and short lines are jumbled together, and stanzaic patterns appear and vanish, seemingly at random. It has the look of "experimental" poetry, but while the arrangement is looser and more expansive than in many of her earlier collections, her subject is the same: the natural world and her (read "our") spiritual connection to it. Oliver has not yet exhausted the possibilities of nature—her attention to detail is sharp, her descriptions often beautifully apt and touching. At the beginning of the second section, she proclaims, "I am a woman sixty years old and of no special courage." Such droll moments are rare, but they introduce a welcome humility to work that elsewhere lapses into piety and self-importance, especially in the many catalogues of images. There, the author sounds like a poet more under the spell of Whitman than Frost, who is clearly another influence. This need not be a bad thing, except that it induces sentiments like "I will sing for the iron doors of the prison / and for the broken doors of the poor, / and for the sorrow of the rich, who are mistaken and lonely." Also bothersome are the frequent references to the poem itself ("Welcome to the silly, comforting poem"). But there is finally little comfort in the pivotal question—"what does it mean, that the world is beautiful"—when we know, as the poet must, that the answer could easily be "nothing." Maintains the status quo of Oliver's previous work, but breaks no new ground.Reading, Peter MARFAN Bloodaxe (64 pp.) paperback original Sep. 29, 2000

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780306810732
  • Publisher: Da Capo Press
  • Publication date: 10/28/2001
  • Edition description: Reprint
  • Pages: 55
  • Sales rank: 569,367
  • Product dimensions: 7.10 (w) x 8.20 (h) x 0.23 (d)

Meet the Author

Mary Oliver is the author of twenty books, including The Leaf and the Cloud and What Do We Know. Her many accolades include the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Read an Excerpt



Chapter One


    Flare


    1.


    Welcome to the silly, comforting poem.

It is not the sunrise,
which is a red rinse,
which is flaring all over the eastern sky;
it is not the rain falling out of the purse of God;
it is not the blue helmet of the sky afterward,
or the trees, or the beetle burrowing into the earth;
it is not the mockingbird who, in his own cadence,
will go on sizzling and clapping
from the branches of the catalpa that are thick with blossoms,
   that are billowing and shining,
      that are shaking in the wind.


    2.


    You still recall, sometimes, the old barn on your great-grandfather's
farm, a place you visited once, and went into, all alone, while the grownups
sat and talked in the house.

    It was empty, or almost. Wisps of hay covered the floor, and some
wasps sang at the windows, and maybe there was a strange fluttering bird
high above, disturbed, hoo-ing a little and staring down from a messy ledge
with wild, binocular eyes.

    Mostly, though, it smelled of milk, and the patience of animals; the
give-offs of the body were still in the air, a vague ammonia, not unpleasant.

    Mostly, though, it was restful and secret, the roof high up and arched,
the boards unpaintedand plain.

    You could have stayed there forever, a small child in a corner, on the
last raft of hay, dazzled by so much space that seemed empty, but wasn't.

    Then—you still remember—you felt the rap of hunger—it was noon—and
you turned from that twilight dream and hurried back to the house,
where the table was set, where an uncle patted you on the shoulder for
welcome, and there was your place at the table.


3.


    Nothing lasts.

There is a graveyard where everything I am talking about is,
now.
I stood there once, on the green grass, scattering flowers.


4.


Nothing is so delicate or so finely hinged as the wings
of the green moth
against the lantern
against its heat
against the beak of the crow
in the early morning.
Yet the moth has trim, and feistiness, and not a drop
   of self-pity.
Not in this world.


5.


My mother
was the blue wisteria,
my mother
was the mossy stream out behind the house,
my mother, alas, alas,
did not always love her life,
heavier than iron it was
as she carried it in her arms, from room to room,
oh, unforgettable!
I bury her
in a box
in the earth
and turn away.
My father
was a demon of frustrated dreams,
was a breaker of trust,
was a poor, thin boy with bad luck.
He followed God, there being no one else
he could talk to;
he swaggered before God, there being no one else
who would listen.


Listen,
this was his life.
I bury it in the earth.
I sweep the closets.
I leave the house.


6.


I mention them now,
I will not mention them again.
It is not lack of love
nor lack of sorrow.
But the iron thing they carried, I will not carry.
I give them—one, two, three, four—the kiss of courtesy,
   of sweet thanks,
of anger, of good luck in the deep earth.
May they sleep well. May they soften.
But I will not give them the kiss of complicity.
I will not give them the responsibility for my life.


7.


Did you know that the ant has a tongue
with which to gather in all that it can
of sweetness?
Did you know that?

Table of Contents

Flare 1
Work 9
From The Book of Time 17
Riprap 25
Rhapsody 33
Gravel 37
Evening Star 47
Acknowledgments 55

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