Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver

"In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be."

So begins Upstream, a collection of essays in which revered poet Mary Oliver reflects on her willingness, as a young child and as an adult, to lose herself within the beauty and mysteries of both the natural world and the world of literature. Emphasizing the significance of her childhood "friend" Walt Whitman, through whose work she first understood that a poem is a temple, "a place to enter, and in which to feel," and who encouraged her to vanish into the world of her writing, Oliver meditates on the forces that allowed her to create a life for herself out of work and love. As she writes, "I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple."

Upstream follows Oliver as she contemplates the pleasure of artistic labor, her boundless curiosity for the flora and fauna that surround her, and the responsibility she has inherited from Shelley, Wordsworth, Emerson, Poe, and Frost, the great thinkers and writers of the past, to live thoughtfully, intelligently, and to observe with passion. Throughout this collection, Oliver positions not just herself upstream but us as well as she encourages us all to keep moving, to lose ourselves in the awe of the unknown, and to give power and time to the creative and whimsical urges that live within us.

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Why I Picked It Up

In plucking my copy of Upstream: Selected Essays off my shelf and flipping through it, I saw a ton of underlines—but didn't remember much of it at all. I must have read it young enough to not fully commit it to memory. I'd also just finished Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, which was excellent but also deeply sad to me, so I needed a book that I knew would reset me back to "normal" so I wouldn't be so affected by empathy for the heavy, intense bleakness shouldered by Murakami's narrator. (My review is coming, promise.)

I make a significant effort to read writers and stories that expose me to other worldviews, emotions, behaviors, etc,. But when you need to feel rebalanced, there might be no greater pleasure than revisiting a writer who embodies your values so entirely that you're reminded what moves you most. And to be grateful for it.

I have a boundless affection for Mary Oliver, though. I regularly read and revisit her poetry. I think of her every time I lace up my hiking boots or listen to wind through the trees. Without a doubt, she is one of my most formative literary influences, in the same way that she praises the inspiration of authors she loves and connects to within this collection of essays.

So I owed her a visit.

My Review

I love that Mary Oliver combines a whimsical, playful appreciation of nature — the ode of childlike wonder — while still devoting such seriousness to the responsibility of noticing, appreciating, and honoring the detail of the world and our place in it. Her particular way of moving through reality seems to align a lot with mine, along with her purpose: to convey the resonance that beauty inspires. She gets at our similarities immediately by page 14:

“I quickly found for myself two such blessings—the natural world, and the world of writing: literature. These were the gates through which I vanished...In the first of these—the natural world—I felt at ease; nature was full of beauty and interest and mystery, also good and bad luck, but never misuse. The second world—the world of literature—offered me, besides the pleasures of form, the sustentation of empathy...And this is what I learned: that the world's otherness is an antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness—the beauty and mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books—can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.”

In other words, beauty and connection (through nature and books) form the cohesion that makes everything better and meaningful. I feel the exact same, which is why I prioritize natural beauty and reading. They're two of my deepest interests, and those I've shaped my life around. Awe is big and small and shaping.

And then her beliefs about how to conduct herself align with my own, balancing a sense of unshakeable personal responsibility while still praising the merits of tenderness and gentleness. To allow yourself to be affected is strong.

“You must never stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.”

She effectively resolves some of the issues I have with definitions of autonomy that don't include softness and a generosity in attention. Curiosity is a driving force of mine and how I conduct my life. As a writer, I also adore her emphasis on detail and specificity as being a method for this, because that's an attribute I credit to a lot of my favorite authors (and to myself, obnoxiously.)

“[There was] the oracular tenderness with which he viewed the world—its roughness, its differences, the stars, the spider—nothing was outside the range of his interest.”

“Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

And then, of course, I love that all of her work reads as a love letter to the outdoors. And I love that she can relish and savor and convey the satisfaction of each detail of nature while still admitting that there's no poem or work that can ever do them justice. Nature just is.

One aspect I've always loved about starry nights or stunning sunsets and the like is that no photo I could take could ever come close to capturing how awe-inspiring the sight is in person, and I take a weird amount of peace and comfort in the fact that some things, you can only experience firsthand in the present. I love knowing that no representation can live up to the moment.

(Psychology fact intrusion: our brains prefer nature because natural environments are complex in ways that both engage and soothe our nervous systems—providing enrichment without overwhelming us, essentially. In nature, we are exactly physiologically at the level of engagement and focus most optimal to us, which is partly why it feels so good. Which is also why you might have your best brainstorms or feel most relaxed while walking through the woods.)

“If this was lost, let us be lost always...I do not think that I ever, in fact, returned home.”

“...and the sunflowers themselves more wonderful than any words we could write about them.”

And of course, there is little I love more than being in nature (especially when by myself.) Disappearing into the woods does feel reverent and spiritual. And both writing and nature scratch the same itch, combining the comforts of solitude with the pleasures of connection. Mary Oliver has the same insistence on the treasures of being alone.

“For me, it was important to be alone; solitude was a prerequisite to being openly and joyfully susceptible to the world of leaves, light, birdsong, flowers, flowing water.”

But she also knows when to dial it back. Mary Oliver conveys everything through a lens I love that reminds us to be grateful for both isolation and devotion in tandem, emphasizing that we are each responsible for allowing beauty, faith, goodness, etc,. in.

“Do you think there is anything not attached by its unbreakable cord to something else?”

“No one has made a list of where the extraordinary may happen and where it may not. It likes the out-of-doors. It likes the concentrating mind. It likes solitude. It is more likely to stick to the risk-taker than the ticket-taker.”

“The poem is written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame.”

I appreciate the gravity of her work in showing the fundamental importance of her responsibility to seek and translate beauty, which is how I feel—and a calling I wish I could better articulate to others. Yes, I notice little things, but no, they are not trivial. It's all about balance: controlling and disciplined, but giving into the good. (I could seriously cite so many Mary Oliver quotes in any given blog post I write. I am resisting the urge to bury you in lines I love.)

“A man should want to be domestic, steady, moral, politic, reasonable. He should also want to be subsumed, whirled, to know himself as dust in the fingers of the wind. This was [Emerson's] supple, unbreakable faith.”

“In this universe, we are given two gifts: the ability to love, and the ability to ask questions.”

“What is that great labor? Out-circling interest, sympathy, empathy, transference of focus from the self to all else; the merging of the lonely single self with the wondrous, never lonely entirely.”

Upstream: Selected Essays includes more observational essays (focused on specific fish, for example) and broader, more wide-ranging reflections on her town, life, childhood, etc,. She also peppers in essays that analyze the works and impact of some of her favorite authors, giving a thorough intro to the relevance of writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson (who I'm currently reading) and Edgar Allen Poe.

And then, of course, she just has some little details I love, like her ode to dawn or her musings on the symbolism of eye contact.

Or her (relatable) essay about leaving a spider on the stairs made me laugh, because I have done the same. I once had a house guest I warned about the spider I let live in the bathroom. They asked if they should kill it and I said NO! I told you so that you WON'T! Also, spiders are a warning/litmus test of sorts my family waves in front of those we invite to visit us for those we have up to Black Island; we coexist with nature, and if you can't handle that, it's maybe not the best place for you to visit.

Overall, I love that although she advocates for the value of being alone and being able to retreat, etc,. etc,. she also notes that we can't truly know something until we experience it ourselves firsthand, even in domains you assume you know already—so you can't just rely on books or your mind or your intuition. It's a reminder to remain open to people and places and change. Resist the urge to withdraw. Again, pay attention.

All we know is that we know so little, and everything is always so dynamic. Within that, she acknowledges that fondness feels perilous, and that openness to beauty and transformation (especially as she seeks it—within nature) can be terrifying. All in all, the process is bittersweet, but it feels like a braver stance to me than total detachment. And it's definitely the one I occupy: curious, reverent, disciplined in my purpose, focused on beauty, independent but valuing connection.

“The world is not what I thought, but different, and more! I have seen it with my own eyes! Even the spider? Even that.”

“But probably it is closer to hope, that is more active, and far messier than faith must be. Faith, as I imagine it, is tensile, and cool, and has no need of words. Hope, I know, is a fighter and a screamer.”

Near the end of this year, I wondered if my optimism meant I was delusional or wasn't strong, and whether my hope—in my dreams, my people, everything—was actually good for me. A big question of my year: what is a healthy amount of hope? And I love her perspective on it: on how active it is to remain convinced in the virtues. So she's possibly one of the most soothing writers I could read at this point in time.

Mary Oliver can also be light and humorous and witty, like when writing about a black bear visitor to town, Provincetown being heaven (such an earnest love letter to her home), or in the pleasure of building her own house for $4 (an endeavor of which I am extremely jealous.)

And, in what we associate Mary Oliver with, she keeps each essay grounded in a reverence for nature and wilderness that aligns so thoroughly with my own values.

“I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me, the door to the woods is the door to the temple.”

All in all, Upstream: Selected Essays is a favorite. Whether you're a nature lover planning your next backpacking jaunt (or, like Oliver, grabbing a backpack with whatever you have in it and skipping all your responsibilities to go crouch beside a creek) or someone cultivating a sense of beauty or just someone who appreciates a deft, poetic writer, you might love it.

As a gal constantly figuring out how to balance sensory experience / awareness of the present vs. a hunger for knowledge and honoring the call to a creative life, Oliver's navigation strategy makes total sense and aligns with everything I love about being outside, being connected, being alone, reading, etc,. All those "most important things" to me in turn.

Each essay is pretty short, and (in my version, at least), the typeface is wide and friendly. So it's a quick, easy read that does a lot of good. It's lovely and humble and invigorating, and it makes me want to drive until I can't even comprehend the thought of a city or a screen or anything not green or blue or shadowed by a tree. Absolutely stunning.