REA+2+Oliver,+Whyte,+and+Sexton

Mary Oliver, Ann Sexton, David Whyte: February 2012

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” - John 1: 1-2


 * __ Definitions __** :
 * 1) Incarnation/Incarnational
 * 2) Sacrament/Sacramental
 * ||  || **// Winter Child //****//, //**** David Whyte **
 * ||  || **// Winter Child //****//, //**** David Whyte **

Myself at my door like Blake at home in his heaven my own heart newly opened by the news and my face turned upward and innocent toward them.

All the stars like a great crowd of creation singing

above the blessed house.

- // The House of Belonging //, 2004

||  ||   ||   ||  Mary Oliver David Whyte ||

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
 * || **// The Swan, //** Mary Oliver

Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -

An armful of white blossoms,

A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned

into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,

Biting the air with its black beak?

Did you hear it, fluting and whistling

A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall

Knifing down the black ledges?

And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -

A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet

Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?

//And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?//

//And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?//

//And have you changed your life?// - // House of Light //, 1990

||  ||


 * || **// Welcome Morning //****//, //**** Ann Sexton **

There is joy in all: in the hair I brush each morning, in the Cannon towel, newly washed, that I rub my body with each morning, in the chapel of eggs I cook each morning, in the outcry from the kettle that heats my coffee each morning, in the spoon and the chair that cry “hello there, Anne” each morning, in the godhead of the table that I set my silver, plate, cup upon each morning.

All this is God, right here in my pea-green house each morning and I mean, though often forget, to give thanks, to faint down by the kitchen table in a prayer of rejoicing as the holy birds at the kitchen window peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it, let me paint a thank-you on my palm for this God, this laughter of the morning, lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t share, I’ve heard, dies young.

- // The Awful Rowing Toward God //, 1975 ||  ||

Biographies of David Whyte, Anne Sexton, and Mary Oliver

David Whyte grew up in Yorkshire, England. He studied Marine Zoology in Wales and trained as a naturalist in the Galapagos Islands. He has also worked as a naturalist guide, leading anthropological and natural history expeditions in various parts of the world, including treks among the mountains of Nepal. Whyte's poetry reflects a living spirituality and a deep connection to the natural world. He is one of the few poets to take his perspectives on creativity into the field of organizational development, conducting workshops with many American and international companies. David Whyte currently lives in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

Anne Gray Harvey was born in Newton, Massachusetts, in 1928. She attended Garland Junior College for one year and married Alfred Muller Sexton II at age nineteen. She enrolled in a modeling course at the Hart Agency and lived in San Francisco and Baltimore. In 1953 she gave birth to a daughter. In 1954 she was diagnosed with postpartum depression, suffered her first mental breakdown, and was admitted to Westwood Lodge, a neuropsychiatric hospital she would repeatedly return to for help. In 1955, following the birth of her second daughter, Sexton suffered another breakdown and was hospitalized again; her children were sent to live with her husband's parents. That same year, on her birthday, she attempted suicide. She was encouraged by her doctor to pursue an interest in writing poetry she had developed in high school, and in the fall of 1957 she enrolled in a poetry workshop at the Boston Center for Adult Education. In her introduction to Anne Sexton's //Complete Poems//, the poet [|Maxine Kumin], who was enrolled with Sexton in the 1957 workshop and became her close friend, describes her belief that it was the writing of poetry that gave Sexton something to work towards and develop and thus enabled her to endure life for as long as she did. In 1974 at the age of 46, despite a successful writing career--she won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for //Live or Die//--she lost her battle with mental illness and committed suicide. Like [|Robert Lowell], [|Sylvia Plath] , [|W. D. Snodgrass] (who exerted a great influence on her work), and other "confessional" poets, Sexton offers the reader an intimate view of the emotional anguish that characterized her life. She made the experience of being a woman a central issue in her poetry, and though she endured criticism for bringing subjects such as menstruation, abortion, and drug addiction into her work, her skill as a poet transcended the controversy over her subject matter.

Mary Oliver was born on September 10, 1935 in Maple Heights, Ohio. As a teenager, she lived briefly in the [|home of Edna St. Vincent Millay], where she helped Millay's family sort through the papers the poet left behind. In the mid-1950s, Oliver attended both Ohio State University and Vassar College, though she did not receive a degree. Her first collection of poems, //No Voyage, and Other Poems//, was published in 1963. Since then, she has published numerous books, including //Thirst// (Beacon Press, 2006); //Why I Wake Early// (2004); //Owls and Other Fantasies : Poems and Essays// (2003); //Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems// (1999); //West Wind// (1997); //White Pine// (1994); //New and Selected Poems// (1992), which won the National Book award; //House of Light// (1990), which won the Christopher Award and the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award; and //American Primitive// (1983), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. The first part of her book-length poem //The Leaf and the Cloud// (Da Capo Press, 2000) was selected for inclusion in //The Best American Poetry 1999// and the second part, "Work," was selected for //The Best American Poetry 2000//. Her books of prose include //Long Life: Essays and Other Writings// (2004); //Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse// (1998); //Blue Pastures// (1995); and //A Poetry Handbook// (1994). "Mary Oliver's poetry is an excellent antidote for the excesses of civilization," wrote one reviewer for the //Harvard Review//, "for too much flurry and inattention, and the baroque conventions of our social and professional lives. She is a poet of wisdom and generosity whose vision allows us to look intimately at a world not of our making." Her honors include an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award, a Lannan Literary Award, the Poetry Society of America's Shelley Memorial Prize and Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Oliver held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College until 2001. She currently lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

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