We can all be saved by the beauty of the world

One of the most famous American poems ever written is calling to you:

Wild Geese

…..Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – 

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

One of the most famous American poets is calling to you:

“When they [people] are in a state of being torn open by life, and they need someone to speak to that state of the soul – it’s Mary Oliver. It’s a Mary Oliver poem that they find themselves held by. And they don’t need a critic to explain to them why.”    

Ariana Reines, in “Saved By the Beauty of the World.”

Mary Oliver’s poetry is for everyone. 

You don’t have to be a poetry connoisseur. You don’t need to know anything about poetry to experience the pleasure of encountering one of her poems for the first time and the deep solace her words offer in times of grief.

It gave Mary Oliver immense satisfaction to see her poems have such wide appeal, even among people who don’t typically read poetry. That was exactly what she intended.

The new PBS American Masters documentary, “Mary Oliver: Saved By the Beauty of the World,” which airs at 9 pm EST on Tuesday, August 25, is now playing in select theaters across the country, many of which are sold out. 

If you’re new to Mary Oliver, your “beginner’s mind” might be dazzled by what you hear.

If you are already a Mary Oliver fan, you may not see as much of her in the documentary as you’d like, since she gave so few interviews, but you’ll appreciate the famous and immensely cool people singing her praises and savoring her poems. 

Mary Oliver and I are from the same suburban Cleveland town, though she came along twenty years before my time. She wrote about skipping school and heading into the woods with a book of Walt Whitman poems; I know the woods (now long gone) she described. 

She wrote a poem about a beloved pond replaced by the then-largest shopping center in America; I know that shopping center (now largely neglected and abandoned), where we bought our school clothes and our fancy birthday cakes.

I didn’t pay much attention when Mary Oliver won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984. Even though I’d majored in English literature and was working in book publishing in New York City, I hadn’t read poetry in years. When I sampled a few poems from her collection, “American Primitive,” they didn’t speak to me, maybe because, amid skyscrapers and endless concrete, nature felt distant and irrelevant.

But somewhere along the line, I gave Mary Oliver another try. It must have been the right poem (I don’t remember which) at the right time. I don’t have the words to describe what I felt. I suppose you could call it a revelation, a kind of conversion. By then, I’d left New York City, in part to be closer to the natural world. Here was a poet inviting me to go even deeper into nature.  I have read Mary Oliver’s poems ever since. They tell me how to live.

Below are a couple of the best performances of Mary Oliver’s poems I was able to find online.

Candace Barrett Birk’s recitation of “When Death Comes” is captivating. Despite the bleak title, I think Mary’s expansive vision will lift you up.

“The Journey,” which hints at trauma and the instinct to survive, is one of Mary Oliver’s most powerful and best-loved poems. I prefer this performance by singer/songwriter Chris Thile to the one in the documentary, though both are moving.  

The day I went to the theater in Cleveland Heights to see “Saved By the Beauty of the World,” the air quality was so poor because of the Canadian wildfires that I wore a mask. 

I’d just heard, in an oddly definitive and poorly reported PBS newscast, that the age of reading (and, by implication, writing) is now over because of screens and AI.

I want poems written by humans, not by machines, don’t you?

I want poems that urge us to consider very, very carefully what we plan to do with our one wild and precious life.

Mary Oliver died in 2019, but I don’t think her poetry will fade. I believe her voice will become more relevant, more urgent, and more treasured as we face a very uncertain future.