Liam Meldung - Week 9 - Pick a Poet (Mary Oliver) - "Song for Autumn"

            I have started to struggle with finding a poem by Mary Oliver that I enjoy. Don’t get me wrong, the work that I have read of hers and that I have written about so far have been fantastic, but as I was trying to choose a poem for this week's blog, I struggled. I guess she isn’t my favorite poet in the world, but I think that this poem is pretty good.

            The poem “Song for Autumn” by Mary Oliver is basically what it sounds like, a poem about autumn and what happens during this time of year. It wasn’t too hard to understand in my opinion. I was more intrigued by the language and the way she wrote the piece to describe the way one might think about autumn. 

            The way Mary Oliver writes this poem is by describing different things, like a tree or a leaf and explaining how autumn brings those things a new adventure, a new purpose, one they have been longing for. Oliver writes, “don’t you imagine the leaves dream now, how comfortable it will be to touch the earth instead of the nothingness of the air and the endless freshets of wind?” She explains how the leaves want more than just to hang from a branch on a tree, they want to feel the ground fly around and move places, not stay stagnant in one spot forever. This reminds me of human beings. A new season comes along and we change the way we dress and the activities we do to match the season. 

            Mary Oliver, as I described in my other blog posts, uses personification through nature a lot. In this case I believe she is using nature, like the trees, the leaves, and the season as a whole, to describe how people change just like the seasons do and the things impacted by the seasons do, as well as the idea that these changes bring new adventures and new meaning to our lives. We are like the leaves. We are one way for a while, and then we become ready for a new adventure, a new experience. It relates to us a lot as seniors because it’s as if we are changing seasons from summer to autumn, starting a new adventure, a life of our own, that most if not all of us are ready for and want, just like the leaves. 

            Now that I think deeper into the meaning of this poem, it has way more than just about the season, it’s about how the seasons, autumn in particular, relates back to people.

            What do you think this poem might mean?

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=42420 

autumn rain | mary oliver song for autumn | Mary oliver, Mary oliver poems, Classic poems


Comments

  1. Avital HorowitzNovember 15, 2022 at 9:02 PM

    I really enjoyed this poem. The way the poet personifies the nature of autumn was fascinating to me. I have never really thought about how the season itself effects nature too much until reading this poem. I loved the way the poet gave examples of what happens to nature in the fall by personifying the nature itself.

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