Half Wild: Poems

Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets

by Mary Rose O'Reilley

Half Wild is spiritual biography wound backwards, spiraling into the world rather than out of it. Though it reflects on the paradoxes of our violent times, Mary Rose O'Reilley's collection hangs on to life like the bee up to his hips in love who will fall asleep in the snow and wake up still kissing his flower. In O'Reilley's poems, human, animal, and mineral creations interpenetrate and share surreal conversation -- even stones exchange stories of hot times in the magma and animals are listened to intently. Here sacred inquiry is grounded in a passion for the natural world, resolving questions through lyric, erotic, and sensual response. The poems of Half Wild revel in desire and longing as instruments of theological critique. You were the part of me that gave itself to death. Sometimes I dream of eyes, sealed with a membrane of unknowing like a mystic's veil, that open to my glance without surprise. Sometimes I dream of perfect understanding. Sometimes I snatch at hands that seem to seek as through a caul. Sometimes I waken With an infant's shriek. -- from Twin

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2006

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the floor
of the South Bend, Indiana
Catholic worker shelter,
smelling home's bread,
I twitch from sleep,

rise to examine the street
like a superintendent of dark;
by habit, clutch for the keys
to houses long closed against me.
I jingle them
here in night's mouth.

Somewhere
deep in the rooms
an oven door slams
and all the bread in the world
is black with tears.

[Anne (Not of Green Gables) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I rate poetry based on how much I highlight/want to tab. This was a perfectly fine collection but not overly sure I'll remember it.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Patrice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spirituality revealed through nature, through metaphor, through loss and what is found. I still cry each time I read the poem "Miscarried."

I had a daughter whose name also was Rain...

[SmarterLilac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe the best thing I've read this year. So excellent. A flawlessly crafted book of original poems that is sure to withstand many re-reads.

[Twila Newey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection I will come back to again and again. It is at once deeply quiet and electric. The moments are often grounded in nature. By the end I was marking each poem to re-read. I think this maybe the tradition to which my own writing tends to belong. But I'm afraid it is a little out of fashion in the world of fast, consumable, disruption. Still it was nice to find a voice on the page that felt connected to mine, an auntie of sorts.

[Zarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's a few poems in this collection I enjoyed, but even those didn't lift up the book as a whole.

[Marianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intense, disturbing, vivid. She's very good at making poems l, but only in a couple of them did I feel the same connection as I do with her prose. Useful to know.

[M Delea · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my Book for Day 18 of the 2025 Sealey Challenge.

[Lisa M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went to my used bookstore in search of a good poetry collection. I like to scan the titles, read the backs of collections, and pick at random - when I was younger, I feared poetry, especially unknown poetry. What if I didn't like it? Even worse, what if I didn't "get" it? Poetry is often considered "deep" after all. Now, I revel in randomly jumping into a collection. This was one of my best jumps yet. The cover of "Half Wild" proclaims that it won the 2005 Walt Whitman award - it deserved it. I found O'Reilley to be a masterful poet. The structure and line breaks in her poems were perfect - clever, but subtle, not flashy. There were a few times that her word choice could have been better, but overall, very well written poems. I expected these poems to be about nature and spirituality due to the summary on the back of this book. Although the summary states that "Half Wild" "reflects on the paradoxes of our violent times," I expected a book of light poetry that explores nature and spirituality. I was wrong. This book was surprisingly dark. Many of it's meditations are on death, and what happens to the body and soul after death - all types of death, from miscarriage, to the unwinding of a beloved mother, to kidnap and murder. O'Reilley shows us again and again, that through death and destruction "what is terrible, even, rises." There are lessons to be found in death and what happens to the soul afterwards; O'Reilley puts a light on these lessons for us.

[Mads P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are such rich poems, mostly inspired by nature. The soul and nature are entwined in enchanting conversation. I love these poems. I want more, but sadly this is her only published book of poems as far as I can tell.

The description on the book is put much better than I can describe her work, so I'll just quote it here for those interested in learning more:

"Half Wild is spiritual biography wound backwards, spiraling into the world rather than out of it. Though it reflects on the paradoxes of our violent times, Mary Rose O'Reilley's collection hangs onto life like the bee "up to his hips in love" who "will fall asleep in the snow" and "wake up still kissing his flower." In O'Reilley's poems, human, animal, and mineral creations interpenetrate and share surreal conversation--even stones exchange stories of "hot times in the magma" and animals are listened to intently. Here sacred inquiry is grounded in a passion for the natural world, resolving questions through lyric, erotic, and sensual response. The poems of Half Wild revel in desire and longing as insruments of theological critique."

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This thin volume of poems came to me via The Academy of American Poets, a freebie for members, and came a day or two after a friend emailed me a poem of O’Reilley’s. The volume, O’Reilley’s first it seems, won the Walt Whitman award in 2005 (judged by Mary Oliver). The poems mix the natural and the spiritual worlds with an ecumenical spirit. She packs a lofty meaning into mundane circumstance. The poem titled “The Gods Keep Descending,” for example, begins: “Just carrying in the groceries / you can lose everything.” The beautiful poem “Seascape” concludes, “Loss is the channel, she tells me, / through which we enter the world.” Sharply observant, O’Reilley is a pragmatic mystic who falls like water over the cliff of language. “Call it a gift.”

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

And the murdered women / will stir / and try to remember their bodies / because of the light in her ("Bluebeard's Wife")

rise to examine the street / like a superintendent of dark (7)

The men who came to see / the wild boy in his cage / had groomed themselves / as carefully as chimps. / They wore their wives / upon their arms / like guns. (10)

Wherever you lean / on a spade / in this earth of Duras / you strike the shells / of old houses (26)

"All the while she was dying, I could not stop painting her face." Monet, writing in his journal at Vetheuil (39)

that ghost tenderly enters / the soul of some mortal thing (40)

I feel the earth turn / like a fawn in the belly / and lose the knack of telling // what I inhabit / from what inhabits me (54)

[Jessie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beauty; won the Walt Whitman Award in 2005 (Mary Oliver-like):

From "Sweeping the Zendo":
"Were you to strut/ this floor, Suffering,/ sleek pheasant in plume,/ I would steal feathers/ to hang/ in my hair."

From "When I Imagine My Soul":
"When I imagine my soul/ I think of a bear,/ shambling across tundra./ I think she's escaped from a circus,/ the scars of a ring in her nose:/ fat, loping, patient, untiring bear."

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books of poetry. So beautiful and inspiring.