The Three Selves of Mary Oliver

“Certainly there is within each of us a self that is neither a child, nor a servant of the hours,” wrote poet Mary Oliver. “It is a third self, occasional in some of us, tyrant in others. This self is out of love with the ordinary; it is out of love with time. It has a hunger for eternity.

“Intellectual work sometimes, spiritual work certainly, artistic work always — these are forces that fall within its grasp; forces that must travel beyond the realm of the hour and the restraint of the habit. Nor can the actual work be well separated from the entire life. Like the knights of the Middle Ages, there is little the creatively inclined person can do but to prepare himself, body and spirit, for the labor to come — for his adventures are all unknown.

“In truth, the work itself is the adventure. And no artist could go about this work, or would want to, with less than extraordinary energy and concentration. The extraordinary is what art is all about.”