Mary Oliver’s poem “The World I Live In” clocks in at only two stanzas:
“I have refused to live
locked in the orderly house of
reasons and proofs.
The world I live in and believe in
Is wider than that. And anyway,
what’s wrong with Maybe?
You wouldn’t believe what once or
twice I have seen. I’ll just
tell you this:
only if there are angels in your head will you
ever, possibly, see one.”
Yet, in its short eleven lines, the speaker of the poem refutes the confines of order and logic and opts for a world of her own making. There is no doubt after the first sentence that the speaker is disdainful of what can be presumed to be science, or, rather science that has become dogmatic. Perhaps not entirely disdainful, but the language of “refused” and “locked” are pretty damning. Furthermore, the speaker offers a world in the next sentence that is superior to that of “reason” and “proofs” when they declare their world “is wider than that” of dogmatic science. In addition, science is described as an “orderly house of reasons and proofs” while the speaker makes a clear delineation by calling what they live in a world. Specifically it is a world not constrained by the walls and roof of a house. Not afraid to only look outside through a window but to actually be outside. As the last line of the first stanza asks, “what’s wrong with Maybe?” the speaker challenges what has been predefined as to what exists and what does not. It suggests that being comfortable with the unknown is good and that the unknown does not always have to be figured out.
In the second stanza, the speaker directly addresses the reader by stating, “You wouldn’t believe what once or twice I have seen,” and reaffirms the earlier statement about the wideness of her world. It also keeps with the idea that her world is superior and esoteric as it is one of her making. The last two lines really drive the idea of the world being of her making home, stating, “only if there are angels in your head will you/ever, possibly, see one”. At first, these lines may seem to go against the speaker’s rant against being confined as being “in your head” is also a confinement, yet what if being confined is something deemed by “the orderly house of reasons and proofs” as non-existing. Rather than confinement, the speaker argues that it takes imagination and the allowance for the possibility if one wants to live in a world wider than “the orderly house”. The speaker’s world is not limited by what has already been reasoned out. It is always expanding by what the mind can create. Who cares if it is not backed by reason and proof?