Tammy Letherer On this cold and dreary winter day, I’m feeling warm fuzzies thinking about all the beautifully creative people in my life (yes, that includes you!). I love watching others express their unique visions and there’s nothing I enjoy more than seeing the seed of an idea take root and sprout into something tangible.
I also know that, sometimes, it’s hard to believe that our creative efforts will bear fruit. Projects can begin to look like the view out my back window: frozen, lifeless, dull.
What do you do when you’re in a creative deep freeze? I found myself turning to the words of Mary Oliver, who passed away this week. Oliver was described in 2007 in the New York Times as “far and away, this country’s best-selling poet.”
Though the poem I share here is profound on many levels, I read it as a description of the writing life. In particular, I love this: there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own.
This moment of recognition is something every writer who sticks with it—through every season, through every frustration and every moment of inspiration—eventually discovers. I hope the promise of that gives you warm fuzzies too!
Here’s to Mary.
The Journey
by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
