Sublime

Nature, Man, and God and the volume of his collected letters knows

I understood immediately that certain things—attention, great energy, total concentration, tenderness, risk, beauty—were elements of poetry. And I understood that these elements did not grow as grass grows from a seed, naturally and unstoppably, but rather were somehow gathered and discovered by the poet, and placed inside the poem. —Mary Oliver

a poem by America’s master calligrapher, Lloyd Reynolds. He wrote, “A bug crawls over the paper. Leave him be. We need all the readers we can get.”

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? MARY OLIVER, FROM “THE SUMMER DAY”1

Minott is, perhaps, the most poetical farmer—who most realizes to me the poetry of the farmer’s life—that I know. He does nothing with haste and drudgery, but as if he loved it. He makes the most of his labor, and takes infinite satisfaction in every part of it. He is not looking forward to the sale of his crops or any pecuniary profit, but he is p

I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.

inside one’s head and body, on such an afternoon.

nature. The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them.