Mary Oliver Documentary Premieres on PBS in Late August
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- Sasha Waters' documentary "Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World" premieres on PBS in late August after a limited theatrical run, following its opening-night debut at the True/False documentary festival in March.
- The film opens with Stephen Colbert attempting to recite Oliver's "The Summer Day" and becoming tearfully overcome before reaching its famous closing lines: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?"
- John Waters (the filmmaker, no relation to the director) and Maria Shriver appear as guarded talking heads; Waters recounts becoming close with Oliver and her partner, photographer Molly Malone Cook, as near-neighbors in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
- Celebrity admirers including Oprah Winfrey, Steve Buscemi, V (formerly Eve Ensler), and poets Major Jackson and Ada Limón provide laudatory tributes to Oliver's nature-focused verse.
- The review highlights that Oliver never received a full-length review in the New York Times, a fact the film treats with incredulity given her Pulitzer and cultural reach.
- Oliver's line "joy is not made to be a crumb" has been repurposed by food marketers and culinary influencers, illustrating the perils of decontextualized popularity—a phenomenon Oliver never sought, as a private, reticent person protective of her queer identity.
Why it matters: This documentary attempts to restore context to Mary Oliver's widely quoted but often decontextualized poetry, giving viewers enough biography and texture to return to the poems as wholes rather than soundbites. That intervention carries weight given the film's own incredulity that a Pulitzer-winning poet of her reach never received a full-length New York Times review.
