Mary Oliver’s poetry is so simple and yet so right that it’s no surprise to learn that her poetic “mentor” was Walt Whitman. With either writer, the effortless fit of words and thought might lead you to think there’s really nothing to it—but if you think that, I invite you to try and write something similar yourself and see how easy it really isn’t.
Sasha Waters’ documentary Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World offers the perfect introduction to Oliver and her work, and if you already know her work you’ll enjoy it as a celebration of writing. In fact, I’ll pay thie film the greatest compliment I can for a biographical documentary: were Oliver alive today (she died at age 83 in 2019) I think she’d like it.
Walters includes a lot of Oliver’s poetry, read by Oliver herself as well as a number of other poets and celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, and quotations from her poetry are often used to suggest things she chose to not specify directly. That is particularly true regarding some unfortunate aspects of her childhood (you can google for the details if interested). In interviews, Oliver has said that she came from a “dark and broken house” from which she barely escaped, after a solitary childhood in which her only school accomplishment was breaking the record for truancy. As a child she found refuge in nature and in reading poetry and decided at age 13 that she would be a poet—an extraordinary choice for a young woman in the 1940s from a lower middle-class background.
That kind of self-awareness may be what gave Oliver the strength to leave her traumas behind and create her own life. She studied at Ohio State University and Vassar College and worked at Steepletop, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s estate, as an assistant to Millay’s sister Norma. Part of the job was helping organize Millay’s papers, and the fates (or Oliver’s determination) couldn’t have arranged a better fit: Millay offered a rare model of a successful American woman poet and led an unconventional life, calling herself “Vincent” and rebelling against the strictures placed on young women of her time. She was also bisexual and involved in many political and feminist causes.
Oliver moved to Greenwich Village in 1959 and jumped into the neighborhood’s lively artistic and social scene but continued to visit Steepletop, and on one of those visits she met the photographer Molly Malone Cook. They fell in love, became life partners, and moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts, where many other artists and writers also lived. Both found the town a good match for their work: Cook opened one of the first photographic art galleries in the country and Oliver wrote poetry and explored the seashores and forests around Provincetown (which she called “primary sources” for her work).
Poetry generally doesn’t pay well, especially early in a poet’s career, and neither does art photography. Oliver and Cook were barely getting by at times, but managed to stay afloat by working at a variety of odd jobs (fun fact: Oliver typed the manuscript of Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song). She published poems in various magazine but didn’t have much success until a positive review by Joyce Carol Oates put her on the literary world’s radar. Winning the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for her collection American Primitive gave her career an even bigger boost, and she became a well-known poet (one might even say a poetic celebrity) with big sales to match.
Oliver’s readers love her poetry, but other poets and literary critics haven’t always agreed (Millay suffered a similar fate in her day) largely because of the simplicity and directness of her work. Oliver is sometimes classified as a “nature poet” which may be true but is also reductive and suggests her work is only of interest due to its the subject matter rather than its poetic quality. John Waters (the most delightful interview subject in this film) would beg to differ: he’s no fan of nature, which he claims is always trying to kill him, but says reading Oliver’s work taught him to see, an endorsement that in my books outweighs the negative comments of a hundred academic reviewers.
I only recently became aware of Oliver’s work—my youthful reading took me more in the direction of Marge Piercy and Nikki Giovanni—but once I found her I was hooked. The fact that she’s queer and that her work is rooted in the direct experience of the natural world only makes the fit more perfect, as does the way I came to her work: through the title of footballer and political activist Megan Rapinoe’s memoir, which was inspired by one of Oliver’s best-known poems. | Sarah Boslaugh
Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World will screen on June 19 at 7 pm as part of QFest St. Louis at the Hi-Pointe Theatre (1005 McCausland Ave, St. Louis 63117; 314-644-1100). Individual tickets are $15, or $12 for students and Cinema St.Louis members. More information about QFest is available from the festival web site.
