Poets get to have strong opin­ions about what poet­ry should be and do, espe­cial­ly poets as well-loved as Mary Oliv­er, who passed away yes­ter­day at the age of 83. “Poet­ry, to be under­stood, must be clear,” she told NPR in an inter­view, “It mustn’t be fan­cy…. I always feel that what­ev­er isn’t nec­es­sary should not be in the poem.” Oliver’s Zen approach to her art cut right to the heart of things and hon­ored nat­ur­al, unpre­ten­tious expres­sion. “I don’t know exact­ly what a prayer is,” she writes in “The Sum­mer Day,” “I do know how to pay atten­tion.”

For Oliv­er that meant giv­ing care­ful heed to the nat­ur­al world, shear­ing away abstrac­tion and obfus­ca­tion. She grew up in Ohio, and dur­ing a painful child­hood walked through the woods for solace, where she began writ­ing her first poems.

She became an “inde­fati­ga­ble guide to the nat­ur­al world,” as Max­ine Kumin wrote, and at the same time, to the spir­i­tu­al. She has been com­pared to Emer­son and wrote “about old-fash­ioned subjects—nature, beau­ty, and worst of all, God,” Ruth Franklin remarks with irony in a New York­er review of the poet’s last, 2017 book, Devo­tions. But, like Emer­son, Oliv­er was not a writer of any ortho­doxy or creed.

Oliver’s approach to the spir­i­tu­al is always root­ed firm­ly in the nat­ur­al. Spir­it, she writes, “needs the body’s world… to be more than pure light / that burns / where no one is.” She was beloved by mil­lions, by teach­ers, writ­ers, and celebri­ties. (She was once inter­viewed by Maria Shriv­er in an issue of O mag­a­zine; Gwyneth Pal­trow is a big fan). Oliv­er was long the country’s best-sell­ing poet, as Dwight Gar­ner blithe­ly writes at The New York Times. But “she has not been tak­en seri­ous­ly by most poet­ry crit­ics,” Franklin points out. This despite the fact that she won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for her fifth book, Amer­i­can Prim­i­tive, and a Nation­al Book Award in 1992 for New and Select­ed Poems.

The word “earnest” comes up often as faint praise in reviews of Oliver’s poet­ry (Gar­ner tidi­ly sums up her work as “earnest poems about nature”). The impli­ca­tion is that her poems are slight, sim­ple, unre­fined. This per­haps inevitably hap­pens to acces­si­ble poets who become famous in life, but it is also a seri­ous mis­read­ing. Oliv­er’s work is full of para­dox­es, ambi­gu­i­ties, and the hard wis­dom of a mature moral vision. She is “among the few Amer­i­can poets,” crit­ic Ali­cia Ostrik­er writes, “who can describe and trans­mit ecsta­sy, while retain­ing a prac­ti­cal aware­ness of the world as one of preda­tors and prey.” In her work, she faces suf­fer­ing with “cold, sharp eyes,” con­fronting “steadi­ly,” Ostrik­er goes on, “what she can­not change.”

Her poems have includ­ed “his­tor­i­cal and per­son­al suf­fer­ing,” but more often she engages the life and death going on all around us, which we rarely take notice of at all. She peers into the dark­ness of her­mit crab shells, she feeds a grasshop­per sug­ar from the palm of her hand, watch­ing the creature’s “jaws back and forth instead of up and down.” Oliv­er often wrote about the con­stant reminders of death in life in poems like “Death at a Great Dis­tance” and “When Death Comes.” She wrote just as often about how aston­ish­ing it is to be alive when we make deep con­nec­tions with the nat­ur­al world.

“When it’s over,” Oliv­er writes in “When Death Comes,” ” I want to say all my life / I was a bride mar­ried to amaze­ment.” The cost of not pay­ing atten­tion, she sug­gests, is to be a tourist in one’s own life and to nev­er be at home. “I don’t want to end up sim­ply hav­ing vis­it­ed this world.” In the videos here, see and hear Oliv­er read “The Sum­mer Day,” “Wild Geese,” “Lit­tle Dog’s Rhap­sody in the Night,” “Night and the Riv­er” (above) and “Many Miles.”

Oliv­er was an artist, says Franklin, “inter­est­ed in fol­low­ing her own path, both spir­i­tu­al­ly and poet­i­cal­ly,” and in her work she will con­tin­ue to inspire her read­ers to do the same. These read­ings will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Meryl Streep Read Sylvia Plath’s “Morn­ing Song,” a Poem Writ­ten After the Birth of Her Daugh­ter

An 8‑Hour Marathon Read­ing of 500 Emi­ly Dick­in­son Poems

Hear Dylan Thomas Recite His Clas­sic Poem, “Do Not Go Gen­tle Into That Good Night”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Who among us wouldn’t want the inef­fa­bly mel­low, wit­ty, and wise Bill Mur­ray to crash their par­ty, wed­ding, or White House press brief­ing room? Maybe you’re one of the few who could resist his com­ic charms. But could you throw him out if he brought along a cel­list and read Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem “Dog”? Not I.

Mur­ray appeared at SXSW on Mon­day and read the poem as part of the pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign for Wes Anderson’s new stop-motion ani­ma­tion film Isle of Dogs. And it can seem when we look back at Murray’s many pub­lic appear­ances over the last few years, that the one thing he’s done more than crash oth­er peo­ple’s par­ties and star in Wes Ander­son films has been read poet­ry in pub­lic.

Mur­ray, as Ayun Hal­l­i­day point­ed out in a pre­vi­ous post, is a “doc­u­ment­ed poet­ry nut,” who once wrote poet­ry him­self as a much younger man. He’s been “wise enough,” writes Gavin Edwards at Rolling Stone “not to share it with the world.”  Per­haps we’re miss­ing out.

But we do have many, many clips of Mur­ray read­ing his favorites from oth­er poets he admires, like Fer­linghet­ti, and like Wal­lace Stevens, whose “The Plan­et on The Table” and “A Rab­bit as King of the Ghosts,” he reads above at New York’s Poets House, an insti­tu­tion he has whole­heart­ed­ly sup­port­ed.

Wal­lace Stevens is a famous­ly dif­fi­cult poet, but he is also quite fun­ny, in an oblique­ly droll way, and its no won­der Mur­ray likes his verse. Poets House direc­tor Lee Bric­oc­cetti observes that there is “an align­ment between com­e­dy and poet­ry… a pre­ci­sion in the way you han­dle lan­guage.” Some of my own favorite poets—like Frank O’Hara and the “will­ful­ly ridicu­lous” Ste­vie Smith—are also some of the fun­ni­est writ­ers I’ve ever encoun­tered in any form. Murray’s own poet­ic efforts, were we ever to hear them, may not mea­sure up to the work of his favorites, but he is undoubt­ed­ly “a mas­ter of lin­guis­tic con­trol and pac­ing.”

We also know that he can turn in fine­ly nuanced dra­mat­ic per­for­mances when he wants to, and his mas­tery of the spo­ken word con­tributes just as much to mood­i­er poets like Emi­ly Dick­in­son, whom he reads above in a sur­prise per­for­mance for con­struc­tion work­ers at work on the new Poets House home in 2009. You might agree, how­ev­er, that he real­ly shines with com­ic fare, like Bil­ly Collins “Anoth­er Rea­son I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House” and Lorine Niedecker’s major­ly con­densed “Poet’s Work.”

Any of these read­ings should grant Mur­ray admis­sion into the most uptight of lit­er­ary affairs. If any­one still doubts his skill in the craft of read­ing lit­er­a­ture well in public—which, any writer will you, is no easy thing by far—then hear him read Lucille Clifton’s uplift­ing “What the Mir­ror Said” (above), or Sarah Manguso’s “What We Miss,” Bil­ly Collins’ “For­get­ful­ness,” and Cole Porter’s song “Brush Up on Your Shake­speare.” Hear him read from Huck­le­ber­ry Finn and mum­ble his way through Bob Dylan’s “Shel­ter from the Storm,” in char­ac­ter in the film St. Vin­cent.

Oh, but does the mul­ti­tal­ent­ed Bill Mur­ray, “mas­ter of lin­guis­tic con­trol and pac­ing,” sing show tunes? Does he ever….

Find these poet­ry read­ings added to OC’s col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Bill Murray’s Favorite Poems Read Aloud by Mur­ray Him­self & Their Authors

Bill Mur­ray Gives a Delight­ful Read­ing of Twain’sHuckleberry Finn (1996)

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness