Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World
Preview: 8/25/2026 | 2m 37sVideo has Closed Captions
Celebrate the life and career of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver.
Celebrate the life and career of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Mary Oliver. Shaped by a solitary childhood and rising literary fame, Oliver published more than 30 collections of poetry and essays on nature, beauty, and love.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Support for American Masters is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, AARP, Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, Judith and Burton Resnick, Blanche and Hayward Cirker Charitable Lead Annuity Trust, Koo...
Support provided by:
Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World
Preview: 8/25/2026 | 2m 37sVideo has Closed Captions
Celebrate the life and career of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Mary Oliver. Shaped by a solitary childhood and rising literary fame, Oliver published more than 30 collections of poetry and essays on nature, beauty, and love.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
How to Watch American Masters
American Masters is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.
Buy Now
A front row seat to the creative process
How do today’s masters create their art? Each episode an artist reveals how they brought their creative work to life. Hear from artists across disciplines, like actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, singer-songwriter Jewel, author Min Jin Lee, and more on our podcast "American Masters: Creative Spark."Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship- [Interviewer] When you say you felt different, how did different feel to you?
- [Mary] Not belonging.
I very much wished not to be noticed and to be left alone.
(dramatic music) - [Speaker 1] She was our most famous poet for a long time, and yet completely elusive.
- I think she was always a beatnik.
- Mystic.
- She's radical.
- [Mary] It was shocking.
I was a girl in Ohio and I wanted to write poems unheard of.
- She was an independent woman who wrote the poetry she wanted to write, who loved who she wanted to love.
- [Speaker 2] Molly was this charismatic, stylish, sophisticated person.
- [Mary] We did not have much income.
We had love and work and play.
- [Speaker 3] Mary's career was what this couple was about.
- The winners of the 1984 Pulitzer Prizes were announced today.
- Mary Oliver won the National Book Award for poetry.
- Thank you.
- [Speaker 4] You could not contain her anymore than you could contain the season.
(dramatic music) - [Mary] I could sit for two hours and look at the clouds and be very silent.
- Everybody thinks Mary was this little earth mother.
- [Speaker 4] And that certainly wasn't the life that she led.
- That was one of my frustrations with Mary's poems, she was just presenting herself in the light.
What is the storm?
- One of the things about traumatic experiences is that you have to go in earnestly to look at it.
- Mary spent some time feeling a little unmoored.
- You could hear the truck coming down the road.
You know, it was... - [Speaker 5] In that way, Mary is also a good cautionary tale.
- [Mary] Children forget.
They don't know why they have nightmares all the time.
(dramatic music) - [Interviewer] And then you started this new book.
"What can I say that I have not said before?"
(upbeat music) - [Speaker 6] Mary was very clear that it wasn't gonna define her.
(upbeat music) - [Mary] I got saved by poetry and I got saved by the beauty of the world.
(upbeat music)
Support for PBS provided by:
Support for American Masters is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, AARP, Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, Judith and Burton Resnick, Blanche and Hayward Cirker Charitable Lead Annuity Trust, Koo...