Resource Review: Blue Horses by Mary Oliver

Hi everyone,

I hope you’re enjoying a restful August! This Tuesday Reviewsday I’ll be doing something a little different. Over the next few weeks I’ll be taking some time off, and today I’ll be sharing a review of a resource that’s reflective of what I plan on doing while I’m away: slowing down and connecting to nature to boost positive mental health.

The goal of my resource review series is to share material relevant to mental health. While it may not be a typical mental health resource, sharing Mary Oliver’s poetry with my clients has been a wonderful way to appeal to the needs of the right brain.

While the left brain has been said to be responsible for facts, linear thinking, logic, and sequencing, the right brain is where you’ll find the capacity for imagination, rhythm, and art. The right brain is crucial to emotional regulation, creativity, and connection to self and others – all essential components of mental wellbeing.

Many clients come to therapy burnt out, exhausted, and lacking social connection. I regularly hear stories of people’s lives seeming like Groundhog Day – the same stresses piled on and demands expected day after day. However, if we slow down and truly attend to each moment, we can find glimmers of exceptions to the monotony of the motions, even for those who work long hours or who have responsibilities of caring for others.

There are many ways to slow down, refine awareness, and engage the right brain, and many benefits of doing so.  When we slow down and pay attention using the five senses, we dampen down the response of an overactive amygdala (the part of the brain that signals that there is danger) which is common to those who experience anxiety.  

Some ways to shift out of a chronic stress response are to have a conversation with a caring and attuned person (like at therapist), go for a walk in nature, or enjoy a warm cup of tea in silence. Another way is to read a passage of poetry – I’ve always said that poetry is the most “bang for your buck” when it comes to reading, and I’ve always been amazed at how short passages can light up the soul (and areas of the brain, for that matter!).

 I’m excited to share a poetry collection by Mary Oliver that has been a bedside table mainstay for me since I picked it up years ago, Oliver’s “Blue Horses”, published in 2016.

While Oliver has many collections of poetry (including a collection about dogs which I’m looking forward to exploring someday!), I’m so grateful that I’ve connected with Blue Horses and have returned to it more times than I can count.

In this review I’ve highlighted themes that are therapeutically relevant below, and I hope Oliver’s work speaks to you as much as it has to me.

About the Author:

Mary Oliver was an American poet who won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize. Oliver’s work focuses on the “intersection between the human and natural world, as well as the limits of human consciousness and language in articulating such a meaning” (as perfectly put by the poetryfoundation.org). Oliver’s poetry reflects a history of growing up in a troubled family and experiencing abuse, and she describes how nature was her reprieve from the difficulties of her home life. She passed away in 2019.

Theme 1: meditating doesn’t have to be perfect

Two poems in “Blue Horses” highlight that yoga and meditation can be approached lightheartedly and with ease.

For those who have perfectionist tendencies (and by extension, shame about themselves), meditating and yoga can become yet another practice where people put pressure on themselves to “perform”.  Oliver shows us a different way to approach a spiritual practice.

In her poem “First Yoga Lesson”, Oliver writes:

Standing impressively upright / she raised one leg and placed it against the other / then lifted her arms and / shook her hands like leaves. “Be a tree” she said.

I lay on the floor exhausted / But to be a lotus in the pond / opening slowly, and very slowly rising – that I could do.

I love how she playfully portrays the yoga teacher as having perfect posture, and it makes me laugh to think of the instruction to “be a tree”, as if the teacher may have meant that in a literal way.

I appreciate how Oliver describes herself as exhausted on the floor after the class, because active forms of yoga can be very physically demanding! She so beautifully captures the feeling in final resting pose, savasana, as opening up and rising.

The point is that you can come to yoga with any physical ability, and it’s okay if you find it difficult. You can’t “win” yoga, and there is no prize for standing on your head (this is something I learned quite late into my years of practice). The goal is to show up, move, and enjoy the final feeling of letting go.

I often recommend restorative yoga to my clients, which is a form of yoga that isn’t active at all and is totally focused on that “savasana” feeling. In fact, the whole point of a restorative practice is letting the muscles relax away from hugging the bones, and giving the nervous system permission to relax.

In her poem “On Meditating, Sort Of”, Oliver writes:

Meditation, so I’ve heard, is best accomplished if you entertain a certain strict posture. / Frankly, I prefer just to lounge under a tree …

Some days I fall asleep, or land in that / even better place – half-asleep – where the world, /  spring, summer, autumn, winter -- / flies through my mind in its hardy ascent and its uncompromising decent.  

Once again, the message is that you can approach meditation and a spiritual practice with a sense of lightheartedness. If you fall asleep during meditation, great, that’s what you needed!

Theme 2: it is possible to survive childhood abuse

Many of the clients I work with have had experiences of abuse and neglect in childhood, and feel as if they are ‘broken’ as adults. Unfortunately, abuse and neglect are extremely common in our society, and yet these experiences are shrouded in secrecy and shame. Something I often share with my clients is that there is absolutely hope in overcoming experiences of abuse and neglect, and that healing, and living a meaningful life is possible.

In her poem “To Be Human Is To Sing Your Own Song, Oliver writes:

Everything I can think of that my parents / thought or did I don’t think and I don’t do
…
Of course there were some similarities - they wanted to be happy and / they weren’t. I wanted to be Shelley and I / wasn’t. I don’t mean I didn’t have to avoid imitation, the gloom was pretty heavy. But / then, for me, there was the forest, where / they didn’t exist. And the field. Where I / learned about the birds and other sweet tidbits / of existence. The song sparrow, for example.

In the song sparrow’s nest the nestlings, / those who would sing eventually, must listen / carefully to the father bird as he sings/ and make their own song in imitation of his. / I don’t know if any other bird does this (in / nature’s way has to do this). But I know a / child doesn’t have to. Doesn’t have to. / Doesn’t have to. And I didn’t 

What a beautiful way to describe breaking free from a family pattern that didn’t feel supportive. While in nature a songbird imitates its parent’s song, a human can forge their own path in adulthood.

Theme 3: loneliness is a shared human experience:

In her poem aptly titled “Loneliness”, Oliver writes:

I too have known loneliness. /  I too have known what it is to feel / misunderstood, / rejected, and suddenly / not at all beautiful. / Oh, mother earth, / your comfort is great, your arms never withhold. / It has saved my life to know this. / Your rivers flowing, your roses opening in the morning. / Oh, motions of tenderness!

In this poem, Oliver describes how painful it can be to feel loneliness.

My belief is that we all at times feel the pang of loneliness, even if we are surrounded by people. This poem highlights that sometimes what makes us feel as though we aren’t alone is a connection to nature and spirituality, and I would also argue a relationship to our beloved pets.

It’s important to identify loneliness within ourselves, learn to tolerate the uncomfortable feeling, and to make a bid for connection (with people, nature, or animals) when we feel ready.

Theme 4: death is a natural part of life

Several poems in “Blue Horses” discuss a topic we rarely approach in our society: death as a normal part of life.

In her poem “The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac” Oliver describes cancer as sneaking up on her, writing:

Why should I have been surprised? / Hunters walk the forest / without a sound.

…

Just as the cancer / entered the forest of my body, without a sound

Oliver likens her body to a ‘forest’, and argues that the concept of hunt and prey are a normal part of existing in the natural world.

In her poem “I’m Not The River”, Oliver writes:

“I’m not the river / that powerful presence. / and I’m not the black oak tree / which is patience personified. / and I’m not the redbird / who is a brief life heartily enjoyed. / nor am I mud nor rock nor sand / which is holding everything together. / No, I am none of these meaningful things, not yet.

What a poignant way of portraying that after death, we reintegrate into the world in a different and yet important way.

I find this poem immensely comforting for those facing their own death or the death of a loved one.

To conclude..

I could honestly continue writing as the anthology holds so many other themes that have shaped my life and practice.

Some remaining themes include the magic that art can bring into our lives, which can be found in the poem “Blue Horses”. This poem was named after a painting by Franz Marc, an artist who died tragically in World War I. My favorite line in that poem comes after Oliver describes Marc’s death, writing “Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually. Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us”.

And last, Oliver highlights the theme that Nature can teach us about working together and connection to others.

 I leave you with my favorite poem in the collection, “The Country of The Trees” , and I hope it feeds your soul in the same way it has fed mine.

Have a great day, everyone, and I’m looking forward to reconnecting in September.

The Country of The Trees:  

 There is no king in their country

and there is no queen

and there are no princes vying for power,

          inventing corruption.

Just as with us many children are born

and some will live and some will die and the country

          will continue.

The weather will always be important.

And there will always be room for the weak, the violets

          and the bloodroot.

When it is cold they will be given blankets of leaves.

When it is hot they will be given shade.

And not out of guilt, neither for a year-end deduction

          but maybe for the cheer of their colours, their

                small flower faces.

They are not like us.

Some will perish to become houses or barns,

          fences and bridges.

Others will endure past the counting of years.

And none will ever speak a single word of complaint,

          as though language, after all,

did not work well enough, was only an early stage.

Neither do they ever have any questions to the gods--

          which one is the real one, and what is the plan.

As though they have been told everything already,

          and are content.