ON READING AND WRITING: Simplicity in Two Poets

There’s an old song I love that talks of the greatness of simplicity. It suggests that life is lived best when it’s lived simply – that beauty is most beautiful when it’s plain. I thought of that song when I read Mary Oliver’s simple and wonderful poem called “Work”. In only 73 words (all of them very ordinary), the poet paints a picture of the power of simplicity – and reminds me of another poet who admired the beauty of simple writing.

Simplicity is everywhere in Ms. Oliver’s poem. One of the first things I noticed about the poem is the utter plainness – even bareness – of the diction. Her words seem as simple as the truth she’s trying to express. In fact, 60 of the 73 words in the poem are monosyllabic, and the most complex word is the familiar “punctuation”. She also uses phrases which could be called cliches, a definite taboo for poets who admire ornamentation in poetry. She says she “hang[s] out” at her desk as she’s writing, and she speaks of “grinding [her] teeth” – two very ordinary and overused expressions. She almost seems to be flaunting the plainness of her language – daring us to dislike her simple, honest language. However, the clearest example of the simplicity of the poem is the theme, or message, she conveys. Rather than trying to share some newfangled and intricate truth with the reader, she’s simply stating a fact that’s as ancient as language – that work can be as enjoyable as play. She writes of a typical, ordinary day in her life, a day that involves what is, for her, the simplest and happiest kind of work. All day she “work[s] / with the linen of words/ and the pins of punctuation” as she writes her daily poems, and her work seems more like recreation than labor. Ms. Oliver seems to be saying that it’s easy to enjoy the simple arts of writing and living.

The poem reminds me of another poet who discovered the pleasure of ordinary language. William Wordsworth began writing at a time (1790’s) when poets typically used ornate and fastidious language. If you wanted to be a poet then, you were expected to use the fanciest and most engimatic words you could find. A poem in those days was supposed to be something like an ornate, multifaceted puzzle. Wordsworth had a different idea. He believed that true beauty was found in true simplicity, and that the highest truths were the plainest. Some of his best poems used the most ordinary words to express the most extraordinary truths. The Lucy poems (including “She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways”) are as simple as sunshine and as clear as a blue sky. In them, Wordsworth gives us ordinary words that glow with a natural inner beauty. As we read them, we are astonished to find immense power in the most everyday words the most straightforward sentences. Like Mary Oliver, Wordsworth seems to be telling us the out of the ordinary truth that beauty is plainness and plainness is beauty.

In this modern world of complexity, intricacy, and obscurity, it is refreshing to come upon poets who believe that ordinariness is a treasure worth savoring. In their poems, Mary Oliver and William Wordsworth stated the simplest and most powerful feelings in the simplest and most powerful words. They wrote the way rain falls – directly and straightforwardly. The old song tells us it’s “a gift to be simple”, and these two poets definitely have the gift.