Mary Oliver was a Pulitzer Prize winner whose poems became bestsellers, a combination rarely seen in American literary life. A new documentary opening today examines how she managed it.
Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World, directed by Sasha Waters, opens at IFC Center in New York City today and arrives at Laemmle theaters in Los Angeles on July 11, before expanding to select theaters nationwide. The film had its world premiere at the True/False festival in Columbia, Missouri, and also screened at the Miami Film Festival.
Oliver attracted an unusually wide circle of devoted readers, including prominent public figures such as Oprah, Stephen Colbert, Helena Bonham Carter, Steve Buscemi, and Maria Shriver. Waters told Deadline in an interview that Oliver's broad appeal came from the accessibility of her work.
"She's a poet for people who love poetry, but she's also a poet for people who might think they don't really like poetry or might not really know about poetry or might feel intimidated or bored by poetry," Waters said. "She invites people into the work at every level, and she's not interested in playing with language for the sake of playing with language… I think she's interested in asking the viewer to share an experience or to reflect on their own experience."
Oliver's approach differed sharply from the modernist tradition of T.S. Eliot or Ezra Pound, with their literary allusions and multilingual references. Oliver often wrote in the second person, addressing readers directly. One of her most famous poems, "The Summer Day," ends with the lines: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?"
That poem holds particular significance for former late-night host Stephen Colbert, who appears in the documentary and reads from Oliver's work. According to Waters, Colbert is so overcome with emotion during the reading that he cannot finish the poem. Waters also noted that Colbert had previously told a guest on his show that he sends "The Summer Day" to his children on the first day of summer every year.
The documentary includes several celebrity readers. Waters said she was careful about which public figures to include. "There's pressure, I think, to put celebrities in documentaries," Waters observed. "So, for me, it was really important that if we were going to do that, there needed to be a real connection, like why are they in the film? Helena Bonham Carter, there's a TikTok of her reading a Mary Oliver poem. So that's how I found out she was a Mary Oliver fan. Steven Colbert told a guest on his show that he sent the poem 'The Summer Day' to his children on the first day of summer every year."
Oliver spent her life close to the natural world, and the documentary reflects that. Waters describes Oliver as feeling as at home outdoors as any creature she might encounter there. The film opens in New York today, with the Los Angeles engagement beginning July 11.
