In each issue of Mythic Passages, Michael Karlin will point you to some of his favorite poems published on the World Wide Web.

Why poetry? Mythology is stories based upon human experience that are metaphorical to something deeply true. These stories are what help us understand life, society, beauty, tragedy, and help us to navigate our way through our existence. In the PBS series The Power of Myth, Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell have the following exchange explaining why all of mythology really is poetry and should be read as such.

"Moyers: So whatever it is we experience we have to express in language that is just not up to the occasion.

Campbell: That's it. That's what poetry is for. Poetry is a language that has to be penetrated. Poetry involves a precise choice of words that will have implications and suggestions that go past the words themselves. Then you experience the radiance, the epiphany. The epiphany is the showing through of the essence."

Look for a follow-up discussion on each poem in the next issue that will include reader comments, and some commentary to help provide context and unlock metaphors contained within the poems. Please share thoughts on the poems with michael@mythicjourneys.org. 

This month's poems come from Mary Oliver, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Robert Bly. Both Naomi and Robert will be featured guests at Mythic Journeys 2004.

Mary Oliver is the author of numerous volumes of poetry, including What Do We Know, The Leaf and the Cloud, Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems; West Wind; White Pine; New and Selected Poems, which won the National Book award; House of Light, which won the Christopher Award and the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award; and American Primitive, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. The first part of her book-length poem The Leaf and the Cloud was selected for inclusion in The Best American Poetry 1999 and the second part, "Work," will be in The Best American Poetry 2000. She has also written three books of prose: Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse; Blue Pastures; and A Poetry Handbook. She lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Bennington, Vermont.

When Death Comes

This poem comes from New and Selected Poems. 

Naomi Shiab Nye is the author of numerous books of poems, including 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, Fuel, Red Suitcase, and Hugging the Jukebox. She has twice traveled to the Middle East and Asia for the United States Information Agency promoting international goodwill through the arts. Nye has received awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Carity Randall prize, and the International Poetry Forum. Her poems and short stories have appeared in various journals and reviews throughout North America, Europe, and the Middle and Far East. She has also written books for children, and has edited several anthologies of prose.

Famous

This poem comes from The Words Under the Words.

Robert Bly attended Harvard University and received his M.A. from the University of Iowa in 1956. As a poet, editor, and translator, Bly has had a profound impact on the shape of American poetry. He is the author of more than thirty books of poetry, including The Night Abraham Called to the Stars; Snowbanks North of the House; What Have I Ever Lost by Dying?: Collected Prose Poems; Loving a Woman in Two Worlds; Mirabai Versions; This Body is Made of Camphor and Gopherwood; and The Light Around the Body, which won the National Book Award. As the editor of the magazine The Sixties (begun as The Fifties), Bly introduced many unknown European and South American poets to an American audience. He is also the editor of numerous collections including The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures; The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart: Poems for Men; and A Poetry Reading Against the Vietnam War. Among his many books of translations are Lorca and Jiminez: Selected Poems; Machado's Times Alone: Selected Poems; The Kabir Book; and Neruda and Vallejo Selected Poems. Bly is also the author of a number of nonfiction books, including The Sibling Society; The Spirit Boy and the Insatiable Soul; Iron John: A Book about Men; and Talking All Morning: Collected Conversations and Interviews. He lives on a farm in the western part of Minnesota with his wife and three children.

The Third Body

This poem comes from Eating the Honey of Words.