Celebrated poet, Pulitzer Prize-winner, lover of dogs and long walks in the woods, openly queer but intensely private, Mary Oliver was America’s unlikely contemporary mystic, stalking the ponds and forests of Cape Cod for nearly fifty years in order to open herself – and her readers – to the known and unknowable world.

From a lonely, difficult childhood to literary fame, Oliver’s life was shaped by devotion to nature, paying attention, and the long journey toward learning to love and be loved. Her poems speak directly to contemporary anxieties about attention, presence, and the human relationship with the natural world – issues that feel especially pressing in an era of climate crisis, digital distraction, and social fragmentation.

Directed by Sasha Waters and featuring interviews with Mary Oliver’s close friends, including John Waters, never-before-seen personal photos, notebooks, and correspondence from her archive, and recitations of her work by Stephen Colbert, Lucy Dacus, Steve Buscemi, and Oprah Winfrey, Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World considers the poet’s long lifetime of work in context, capturing the uniqueness of her world and the natural beauty that inspired her.

After the film, stay for a few poems by H.E. Fisher (bio below)

Community Partner: All Ways Writing

“A documentary about a great poet that feels like a great poem.” – Odie Henderson, Boston Globe

“Precious few poets get the privilege of becoming vastly popular in their lifetime, but with that profile often comes pushback from certain corners of the literary world: a suspicion that any verse understood by so many can’t be all that profound. An appropriately accessible and open-hearted documentary on her life and legacy, Sasha Waters‘ Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World doesn’t engage with such criticism at an academic level; it prefers to answer it with the emotive power of Oliver’s own words.” – Guy Lodge, Variety

“If Sasha Waters’s new documentary, Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World, has a slightly mushy heart of its own, it also pays eloquent tribute to its subject, delving into the depths of her work’s accomplished purity and the private life from which it came.” – Zachary Barnes, Wall Street Journal

“This is a gentle, attentive and moving work of art about an artist.” – Matt Zoller Seitz, rogerebert.com

H.E. Fisher is a poet, writer, editor, and instructor. With an early career in documentary and educational film distribution and marketing at companies including New Day Films, Rainlake Productions, Select Media, among  others, H.E. is the author of the poetry collection Sterile Field from Free Lines Press and chapbook Jane Almost Always Smiles from Moonstone Arts Press, and is co-editor of The Big Brutal Act anthology (forthcoming from Small Harbor Publishing), and the editor of (Re) An Ideas Journal. Published widely, H.E. has received nominations for Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize, is a 2026 Saltonstall fellow, a 2025 Bethany Community Arts fellow, and a recipient of Poets Afloat and Stonecrop Gardens residencies, and has received grants from ACOR and ArtsWestchester. H.E. currently lives in the Hudson River Valley.