BLUE IRIS
He wasn’t a lily, and wandering through the bright fields only gave him more ideas it would take his life to solve.—Mary Oliver on Vincent van Gogh, ‘Lilies’
I was introduced to Mary Oliver by her delightful book on metrical poetry, Rules of the Dance. Blue Iris is the first I have read of her own poetic work. This slender, elegantly-illustrated volume collects ten new poems, two dozen previously published poems, and two previously unpublished essays by the Pulitzer prize-winning poet.
The book is described as a celebration of ‘the beauty and wonder of plants,’ but I found even more compelling the theme of human purpose. Sadly, Oliver’s poetry is a loveliness that veils the appalling emptiness of life without God.
‘Now that I’m free to be myself, who am I?’ Oliver asks. {‘Blue Iris’} She turns to nature with her question, and to flowers particularly. ‘What has consciousness come to, anyway, so far, that is better than these light-filled bodies?’ {‘Goldenrod’} So ‘Don’t be afraid to ask them questions!’ Oliver urges us. ‘Their bright faces, which follow the sun, will listen.’ {The Sunflowers}
But will they have any answers?
{For ease of reading, in these and other quotations from Oliver’s poems, I have not marked the frequent line breaks.}
Foremost, Oliver questions the existence of the soul as something distinctly human. ‘Who has it, and who doesn’t?... One question leads to another... Why should I have it, and not the anteater that loves her children?... What about the blue iris?’ {‘Some Questions You Might Ask’}
Thus finding herself kin with flowers, Oliver seeks her life’s purpose in their ephemeral loveliness. She is attracted to the earnest single-mindedness of the violets, whose ‘time is used up in happiness—in becoming the best they can be for the greater glory of .’ {Spring} For Oliver, the possibility of a greater purpose remains a complete blank.
And so she concludes of the lilies—and of her own experience—that ‘they are devoid of meaning, they are simply doing, from the deepest spurs of their being, what they are impelled to do every summer. And so, dear sorrow, are you.’ {‘The Lilies Break Open Over the Dark Water’}
But Oliver finds herself unable to rest in this emptiness: ‘my heart panics not to be, as I long to be, the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle.’ {Blue Iris} She envies the flowers their jubilant unconsciousness—they are ‘wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever.’ {‘Peonies’} In several poems, Oliver describes slipping into a dreamy, death-like state in which she imagines herself a flower—‘so resplendently empty.’ {‘White Flowers’} ‘Look, hasn’t my body already felt/ Like the body of a flower?... so this is the world. I’m not in it. It is beautiful.’ {‘October}
The volume ends with an Afterward on death and the afterlife. Oliver asks, ‘Do you think there is any personal heaven for any of us? Do you think anyone, the other side of that darkness, will call to us, meaning us?’ {‘Roses, Late Summer’} If there is indeed life after death, Oliver would like to come back as a ‘rose in a field full of roses,’ who do not ask ‘how long they must be roses, and then what. Or any other foolish question.’
Thankfully, we have a Word which is more certain and enduring than that of poets and flowers. ‘All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand forever.’ {Isaiah 40:6-8}
I found Blue Iris to be a profoundly sad reflection on life without purpose. Beneath a thin delight in the world’s passing beauty, Oliver unintentionally acknowledges the vanity of a life in which ‘The face of the moose is as sad as the face of Jesus.’ {Some Questions You Might Ask} For Oliver, the passion of Jesus Christ has no meaning, as the flowers have no meaning and as she herself has no meaning beyond happiness in existence. That she finds such happiness difficult is not surprising. True joy is found when we realize our created purpose in living ‘for the greater glory of GOD.’
‘Can the rush grow up without mire? can the flag grow without water? Whilst it is yet in his greenness, and not cut down, it withereth before any other herb. So are the paths of all that forget God.’ {Job 8:11-13}
• detail from Irises by Vincent van Gogh •
September 6, 2013