When I started grad school last year, I filled my backpack with some essentials: plenty of snacks, notebooks to write in when I needed to work out thoughts on the page instead of on a screen, lots of pens, and four well-worn books — Brenda Ueland’s “If You Want To Write,” a book of 19th Century American Literature (with a heavily dog-eared emphasis on the Ralph Waldo Emerson essays),  “Why I Wake Early” by Mary Oliver, and “Upstream” by Mary Oliver. The books, like the snacks, were to help fuel me.

“If You Want To Write” has reminded me that everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.

Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance” has reminded me to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across [the] mind from within.

“Why I Wake Early” has reminded me that to know our world is to be busy all day long with happiness.

And “Upstream” has reminded me that that the poem is a temple—or a green field—a place to enter, and in which to feel. Only in a secondary way is it an intellectual thing—an artifact, a moment of seemly and robust wordiness—wonderful as that part of it is. I learned that the poem was made not just to exist, but to speak—to be company.

You may notice that 50% of these backpack books are Mary Oliver books. That’s not random. She’s my favorite poet and has been since my senior spring of college—when I first came across her stack in the library while procrastinating on a final paper on very stuffy 18th century poets. She’s been a spiritual great aunt to me. She’s maybe the most epic observer of the 20th century, an inspiration in voracious reading and daily writing, and a rock star friend of dogs. She died on Thursday, at 83, and it’s probably the saddest I’ve been about a celebrity death since David Bowie three years ago.

In my memoir workshop this past fall, our professor encouraged us to write about what in us felt unresolved, to explore topics in our lives where we didn’t have firm answers but where we had questions. And through the process of writing, maybe we could at least write towards clarity. I definitely don’t have firm answers why Mary Oliver was and is such a hero for me. I think it has something to do with the sheer amount of time I’ve spent with her, reading her— just about every day, even just a few lines, since 2013. I know she’s a hero. I’m struggling to articulate why—not because I’m unaware of her impact but because her impact has been so vital and incalculably huge.

She’s taught me to pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

She’s reminded me that we’re creative all day long. We have to have an appointment to have that work out on the page. Because the creative part of us gets tired of waiting, or just gets tired. 

She’s reminded me, in her most famous poem, “Wild Geese,” that you do not have to be good. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves—which, every time I read, brings instant relief, this sense of self-forgiveness. It’s the world’s most beautifully lyrical way of saying, “you’re enough, pal.”

She’s reminded me that things take the time they take.

Last May, I was at a friend’s wedding. At one point, I went to get an adult soda, as one does at weddings. While I was waiting in line at the bar, I started making small talk with a friendly stranger. I asked him how he knew our mutual friend. He studied abroad with him. I went to college with him. He asked what I do. I said I was in school for writing. Then, point blank, he asked me:

“Have you ever read ‘Wild Geese’ by Mary Oliver? That poem changes lives, man. That might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read.” I don’t really remember how I responded verbally. I just remember giving this total stranger a big hug.

Much love, MO. Thanks for reminding us that we do not have to be good.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.