The text I chose to close read is from our Carolina Reader called The Journey, by Mary Oliver. Oliver is famously known as a prolific writer, who also won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for her well known poem, American Primitive. She told an interviewer in 2014, “I consider myself kind of a reporter – one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write.” By analyzing the structure of Mary Oliver’s, The Journey, one can clearly see that her unique approach in the lack of stanzas, the use of longer and shorter lines and the resulting rhythm and meaning of each sentence all contribute to the overall understanding of the poem. I think that Oliver’s intended message of this poem is that through the ups and downs of a person’s life journey, you need to learn to tune out the distractions and listen to yourself, since only you know what is best for yourself.

 Generally, when constructing a poem, authors will create stanzas, brief breaks in a poem, to clearly present a separate thought or idea and to organize the poem. The stanzas are essentially connected thoughts that are assembled in breaks. In The Journey, Oliver uses long and short sentences to represent separate ideas instead of stanzas. Without stanzas, the thoughts of each sentence stream along, establishing the choreography and describing the message that Oliver is presenting in this poem. Within the structure of the poem, using sentences instead of stanzas is a unique way of presenting the author’s thoughts and ideas. 

Without stanzas and breaks in the poem, the sentences are closely related and connect to one another, flowing smoothly. The meaning of each sentence comes together to create the overall message that Oliver is portraying. One can interpret that Oliver is talking about a person’s life journey, due to the speaker’s belief of what a person must do in order to succeed in life. Real life is uninterrupted, and the lack of stanzas gives is the impression that life is always ongoing and constant. One cannot simply stop living life with breaks or pauses when things get hard. With that, we know that Oliver is talking about a life journey that describes how united everything is and why one cannot physically pause their life. 

Along with the lack of stanzas representing how connected the sentences are, the way the length of the sentences are structured results in a rhythm. As Oliver has voiced, she uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. By looking at the physical aspects of the poem, there appears to be a pattern; starting sentences with a few long lines, and then ending the poem with short fast lines. This pattern is representing the ‘ups and downs’ of life’s journey. In life, everyone experiences ups and downs, the good and bad, and the easy and hard times. I think that the longer sentences are used to represent the ups, the happy and positive times, in someone’s life. The shorter sentences are used to represent the downs in one’s life, which is where we see lines like, “their bad advice,” and “through their melancholy,” “was terrible”. These lines exemplify the bad, or negative, times of someone’s life. The visual aspects of the longer versus shorter lines create a rhythm to the poem and represent the ups and downs of the life that Oliver is trying to present.  

By looking at the individual sentences and small phrases, we see how they all fit with one another and the role they each play in the overall message. In the first sentence, this person’s life journey is seemingly dictated by other people shouting their opinions and their beliefs on the speaker’s life. The first few lines of the first sentence start on a very strong and definitive note. Oliver states, “One day you finally knew,” “what you had to do, and began”. This is an example of how the longer lines in the poem represent positive ups and downs in the piece, because after this, Oliver says, “though the voices around you,” “kept shouting,” “their bad advice”, which is the negative part in this sentence. With that, the speaker presents us with the challenge to speak our own mind and find our own way through life, even when everyone appears to speak otherwise. 

As the speaker describes the continuing journey, we see there is a struggle with the voices and listening to cries that we can perceive as harmful and disruptive.  Oliver states, “Mend my life! each voice cried”. In every country, personally and impersonally, there is constantly help needed. Although these people are in dire need of help, there comes a point where a person must put themselves first for their own sake, to continue on their journey, despite “their melancholy” cries for help. 

In the next sentence, we see the speaker battling how to step out of the expected path of life. Moving on and going your own way is not always easy. There are people who will bring you down and there are things that happen that you had not planned for, for example, “a wild night” and, “the road full of fallen branches and stones.” Throughout life and in this poem, we see how there are progressive times in one’s life, and then we also see the damaging times. In this sentence, we can tell that the speaker is describing a rough time in their life’s journey.

In the very last sentence of the poem, the speaker is finally able to start to move forward in life, and listen to their own voice. Life will become simpler, “Little by little” as Oliver states, to leave the past behind and move forward in a beneficial direction. The next few lines, “The stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own”, is where the speaker finally has their breakthrough. These, ‘stars’, are where the speaker emerges through the sheets of clouds, the past, and breaks through the norms of society where they now are voicing their own beliefs and opinions. This self-determination is what has and pushed them to become the best version of themselves. 

In Mary Oliver’s, The Journey, one can clearly tell that the journey she is describing, is about life. By looking at the structure and the lack of stanzas, the physical aspects of the longer and shorter lines, resulting rhythm and meanings of each sentence, we can see how these all relate to the general message of the poem. I think that Oliver’s intended meaning of this poem is that during one’s life journey, through much of the ups and downs, a person needs to learn to tune out disruptions in their life and listen to themselves, since only they know exactly what they want in life. 
