Last week, I pulled up the Mary Oliver website to find a poem to read after yoga class. For the first time, I noticed a SHOP icon in the menu bar. The “Mary Oliver Official Storefront” carries totes, hats, stickers, and sweatshirts emblazoned with phrases from her most recognized poems. I am exactly the target audience for these items. In a frenzy of dissociated shopping, I quickly added to cart a hat reading Hello, sun in my face ($34.99) and a hoodie stating Joy is not made to be a crumb ($59.99). Words that have always felt like private prayers were now printed on merch and ready to ship in two to five business days. Dammit, I would look fire for my one wild and precious life.
I was high on the dopamine rush that accompanies impulse buying. For just a moment, the checkout closed the gap between who I am and who I wish myself to be, a spark of hope disguised as a transaction.
And then, luckily, I came to my senses and remembered that I have plenty of hats and sweatshirts already and that there are far better uses for $100. I emptied the cart and closed the tab.
I’ve been thinking about that storefront for days. My favorite poet, one who wrote so tenderly about wild geese and lilies and bears and the holiness of an ordinary morning, has now been turned into a brand. Mary Oliver, who taught us to live simply and look closely, whose poems were the antidote to the rush and clutter of the modern world, is now nothing but a monetized commodity. It feels like watching someone bottle the wind.
Wonder, by nature, doesn’t want to be owned. It wants to expand, to spill over the edges of what we can contain. Mary Oliver’s poems ask us to look up from ourselves, to leave the screens, the noise, and the shopping carts behind. It’s the ultimate contradiction to commercialize the voice that taught reverence over ownership, presence over production. The poet who walked through the woods with nothing but a notebook and the sky for company would likely bristle at her words being used to sell anything, even themselves. Her poetry invites us to leave behind the “greed and hurry” she so often warned against. To see her language printed on a canvas tote, mass-produced and shipped across oceans, feels a little like betrayal.
But it is also true that art cannot remain untouched by the world. The moment we love something, we begin to build a vessel to carry it forward. Maybe books, mugs, and totes are the imperfect boats we use to keep beauty afloat in a consumer-driven sea. And if a sweatshirt quoting Instructions for Living a Life acts as an entry point for someone unfamiliar with Oliver’s work, then perhaps it has done a quiet good.
In the end, the choice is ours. We can Add to Cart and then still go outside. We can drink from the mug, and still stand at the edge of the pond, listening for the soft sound of the world breathing. We can live inside the commerce and the calling, the human and the holy.
So yes, there is irony in the Mary Oliver Store. But there is also grace in it. Each object carries the risk of becoming a cliché, but also the potential to become a small, daily reminder, a whisper reminding us to Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
