Oliver

I feel like I have a disability when I read her poetry and compare my own blasted vision and dulled spirit to the persona in her words.

When she writes of this fat lean bleak beautiful world, stringing a taut grid of tensions across her canvas, my eyes are first opened to and then blinded by the intricacy and mystery that we all inhabit.

Her art drives readers to examine their lives, and does so beautifully with both candor and artistry.

Her words have been agents in my spiritual life, challenging my faith and stoking my zeal.

She has taught me to pay attention.

She asks me to contemplate the exhaustive sweeping world, that Great Engulfment of Time and Matter, and has taught me that the only possible response to this world is one of gratitude and praise.

She has taught me that sorrow is valuable. Without taking evil lightly, she has pointed me away from it, towards goodness, towards light.

Like the psalms, her poems stir within me desire and joy enriched by the reality of suffering and doubt, propelling me toward holiness.

Although her poems are pervaded with disquieted reservations, they yet have achieved greater fluency in the language of faith and worship than many who claim that language as their native tongue, and yet stammer and hesitate, or are silent.