A facebook friend made me aware of a nifty interview with poet Mary Oliver in the April issue of O magazine.
The interview is online, but I liked it enough to buy the magazine. Oliver has heretofore been very private, despite being one of the rare poets who is both literary enough for the literary and accessible enough for popularity, and has won not just major awards but wide readership.
I have this bad tendency to pigeon-hole things, and I really have ignored O magazine because I thought it was strictly self-help. I got the issue and discovered that the Mary Oliver interview is the tip of the iceberg. There's a world more about Poetry Month in it -- a big section, including lots of poems, people talking about their favorites, Caroline Kennedy discussing poetry work with Bronx kids and several anthology projects, AND a profile of W. S. Merwin, who has restored a substantial patch of rainforest all by himself.
On the magazine's cover, you get "in this issue" blurbs for...
- being your best
- weight loss
- Oprah's journals (She and I are the same age, and this was actually quite interesting to me)
- optimism
- loving your work and getting rich from it
- eating well for $40.00 a week (Blogger Xtreme English skewers that one!)
- beauty products
And that's all.
You'd never know there was a whisper of poetry stuff in there.
My first reaction was, That's terrible! All this great poetry-related content and it doesn't even get ONE out of 7 cover teasers! Shows how literature don't get no respect.
Then I realized it could be a smart decision. Oprah is known for promoting books, including classics, so maybe the editors were over-protective of sales figures to fear that intellectual/literary stuff will scare people off, and maybe it couldn't have hurt to put on a cover line about "Mary Oliver - rare interview" or "W. S. Merwin restores a rainforest," but I have to praise the content. Maria Shriver was guest editor and did a smashing job.
Buy a magazine to help you improve your life and stumble on poetry. You could call this sneaky, or you could call it a workaround. Once they do buy it, how many people are going to find the poetry features quite engaging? And maybe read some poetry? And would they have missed out on something that's expanded their worlds, if they'd seen "poetry" on the cover and thought, "Meh. I'll buy InStyle instead" ?
I've read enough stacks of murder mysteries to both understand and cheer-lead for reading the not-difficult; for avoiding mental work during a stress-filled life and going for escape instead. In this sorrowful world, escape reading is tremendous gift, a very positive mental-vacation thing to avail oneself of. Of which to avail oneself. I really hate this syntax rule. It sounds snotty and stupid and is not necessary for meaning or clarity.
Hey, it's my blog and I'll digress if I want to.
Anyway, the deep rewards that come from a little mind-stretch now and then are a gift too. Reading something with more to think about isn't just Mental Spinach - It's Gross but Good For You! It can be likened to acquiring a taste for darker chocolate. I'm aggravatingly ADD and I've read embarrassingly little that's very mind-building, but when I do, it brings a smile to my heart that I can't even explain. Poetry is a succinct way to give the soul a chance to dance a little.
2 comments:
It has absolutely never occurred to me that I might buy a copy of O - but you have almost convinced me it might be worthwhile.
I think this issue might have convinced me to at least check the Oprah online site, (where i first read that interview) every month and see if any good features are hiding under the cover, unannounced. Only, i'll have to think of that a month from now!
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