Weekly Wide-Awake: Every Morning The World Is Created

[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!

Melanie Faith

Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.

Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.

The Society of Professional Journalists

In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.

I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.

Maxine Greene

Philosopher and Education Scholar

Enter your email here to receive Weekly Wide-Awake

back

Weekly Wide-Awake: Every Morning The World Is Created

Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
Mary Oliver

I have been blogging daily for several years. The exercise has been part practice, part enjoyment, and part meditation. As I think about it, attention, astonishment, and telling about it play a part, too.

This year I have decided to focus my daily blog on one poet a month. January I thought about Rumi. February I thought about Dickinson. In celebration of the spring to come. In exploration of paying attention. In dedication to telling the world, March is focused on Mary Oliver.

I became aware of Mary Oliver many years ago as a member of All Souls Church Unitarian in Washington, DC. Her poetry inspired classes, sermons, retreats, and even covenant circle conversation. I have included her poems “Wild Geese,” “Morning Poem, “Angels,” “I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life,” and “Watering Stones” within this Weekly Wide-Awake.

The On Being conversation between Krista Tippett and Mary Oliver, “Listening to the World,” frames Oliver’s perspective about life and writing.

Greg Cook’s essay, “Mary Oliver Saved My Life” examines the therapeutic possibilities of poetry.

Ruth Franklin’s New Yorker essay places Oliver’s work in the context of literary criticism.