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In this inaugural Mary Oliver Memorial Event, U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón introduces her signature project which includes site-specific poetry installations in seven national parks and the anthology You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, published by Milkweed Editions in association with the Library of Congress. Limón is joined by poets Molly McCully Brown, Jake Skeets, Analicia Sotelo, and Paul Tran for a reading and conversation.
“I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed...” In this animated video, the late Mary Oliver reads her poem “The Summer Day” recorded from a 2012 92Y reading.
“I have to wait a long time / for the softer voice of his own / to come through.” In this 2012 reading, the late Mary Oliver reads a selection of poems from her book A Thousand Mornings (Penguin Press, 2012) at the 92nd Street Y.
“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, / the world offers itself to your imagination.” In this video poem, produced by We Are Wildness and Live Learn Evolve, Mary Oliver reads her classic poem “Wild Geese.” Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (Penguin Press, 2017) is featured in Page One in the November/December 2017 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.” Watch this engaging interpretation of Mary Oliver’s transcendent poem “Wild Geese.” Ryland Brooks, the filmmaker, produced the video from footage he shot in 2012 while traveling in the United States and Peru.
