I have to admit I often categorize Mary Oliver as a nature poet. Something that apparently made the poet Mary Oliver pretty mad. But I would also categorize her as our most popular contemporary poet. And I am never one to believe popularity has any bearing on an artist’s value. That’s just not logical. Although poets always do this. I was at a writing retreat once and heard the same things said about Billy Collins that people said about Mary Oliver, that popularity means the poems must be too easy. Popularity is a turn off for some people.
But…it’s not logical.
There’s a generation of Boomer poets out there who are older than me who had a tendency to sound precious. Their poems are full of gravitas. That, more than her popularity, was probably why I have not yet gravitated to Mary Oliver (despite having some new poems to love today). She wasn’t irreverent and ironic enough for my taste. Like John Waters, for example.
Which brings us to the fact that this movie is overflowing with famous commentary and readers (Steve Buscemi, Maria Schriever, Oprah Winfrey, Helena Bonham Carter, Stephen Colbert: just the show-biz folk) and current poets and the hilarious commentary of author/director John Waters who just happened to be a close friend of Mary Oliver and her partner Mollie Malone Cook.
What a world, huh?
I have never seen such a crowd, by the way, at my local arthouse theater. They oversold tickets and people were sitting in the aisle! They had to pull out folding chairs! People were crying during the movie. It was a scene. All of us who went yesterday said even if we got turned away at the box office (the line was long), it would have been worth it to know a movie about the power of poetry was selling out a movie theater.
Watch the trailer.
Since I was in a theater I couldn’t capture a list of all the poems referenced in the movie but the Internet has some ideas:
