Wild Geese

Throughout this short poem, the poet emphasizes the universality of the human experience time and time again. One of the most significant ways Oliver does so is in arriving at the idea of reciprocity: “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine” (Line 5). When Oliver first writes “despair,” she doesn’t qualify it with a possessive pronoun. Instead, it stands alone. After the pause of the comma, she adds the pronoun. This simple move allows the reader to first see “despair” as not belonging to a specific person. When she continues the sentence, the reader has an understanding that the despair is shared. It’s an experience that both “you” and “I” have. The person addressed throughout the poem is a tool that furthers this idea of universality. As we move through the poem, we feel that Oliver could be speaking to us. We all have experienced the pressure to be good, the desire to apologize when we’re not or when we’ve erred somehow. When Oliver tells us to just love what we love, we feel understood and grateful for the permission to simply be. However, by the end of the poem, Oliver writes, “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely” (Line 14).