Time and time again I come back to the probing poetry of Mary Oliver for inspiration in my writing. Her book Dream Work (1986) will not stay open to the page I want, so I prop it open with Virginia Woolf's thought-provoking A Room of One's Own. The poem I choose to read over and over is Dreams. Here are the first few lines.
"All night/ the dark buds of dreams/ open/ richly./ In the center/ of every petal/ is a letter,/ and you imagine/ if you could only remember/ and string them all together/ they would spell the answer."
I feel much the better for having read Oliver. I sigh then go to my own page.
I am not familiar with Mary Oliver's work...guess where I will be heading later today! B&N here I come!
ReplyDeleteI get inspiration for other's writing,also. The Little Prince by St. Exupery, The Prophet by Gibran, and Illusions: Confessions of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach are among some of the many. Of course the poetry of Dickinson, Frost, Snyder, Rumi and "Uncle Walt" (as Rog calls him) Whitman are a few more.
Got to get writing myself...Oh, and you give me inspiration, too!!