Up: [[The Summer Day - Mary Oliver]] Created: 2026-09-19 Updated: 2026-10-14 Course: The Poetry of Attention with Nadia Colburn I’m doing an online course with Nadia Colburn called The Poetry of Attention. We worked with [[The Summer Day - Mary Oliver]], taking it a couple of lines at a time. Nadia is great for encouraging my own responses rather than lecturing. Some of my thoughts and some of Nadia’s: - The questions pull me into the poem. I want to find answers. I also feel more comfortable with the poet, that she is not an expert. Finally, there’s a sense of something divine that has to be the ‘who’. - Nadia — Oliver has chosen her images very carefully. Swan is graceful in the sky, black bear is heavy and earthbound. - Starts from large (the world) and goes to small (a grasshopper). This shows that the poet is paying very close attention. Grasshoppers aren’t always easy to see. A grasshopper seems to be a blend of airborne and earthbound, a combo of swan and black bear. - Nadia — The poem brings us into presence by referencing “this” grasshopper so we are right there with the poet. And the grasshopper looks at us. Attention is going both ways. - The poem has made me feel more curious and also more centred. It’s nice to imagine myself quiet enough, calm enough to be with a grasshopper as it eats sugar from my hand. - Oliver is making nature her church. She is demystifying prayer, making it ordinary and yet extraordinary because it is simply, and difficultly, paying attention. Oliver expresses almost the same thing as Simone Weil who said, *absolutely unmixed attention is prayer*. - Oliver’s comment, “Tell me. What else should I have done?” feels like a rallying cry for [[Wandertivity]]. - Nadia — Often when we slow down and pay attention, we feel like we’re not doing what we’re supposed to be doing. “Should” — a big word for other people’s intentions. - The poem makes me feel both inspired and a strong sense of urgency to enjoy my own wild and precious life. - Nadia — The poem creates a series of symmetries: the airborne swan and the earthbound bear; the grasshopper jumps up into the poet’s hand and then flies away; poet kneels down in the grass. Upward motion to the heavens and downward motion to the earth. Balancing.