Mary Oliver described her childhood home in Maple Heights, Ohio, as a dark and broken place. Her only escape was the surrounding woods, where she took a small notebook, pencil, and a copy of Walt Whitman’s poems. It was there that she learned to chronicle the natural world, the wild geese, the wetlands, the clear pebbles of rain. Oliver’s descriptions of solitude drew comparisons to Emily Dickinson, her euphoric wonder to Whitman himself. Seven years after her death, she remains one of the best-selling poets in the American canon. A new PBS documentary enlists the help of Ada Limon, Helena Bonham Carter, Stephen Colbert, and Oprah Winfrey to tell the story of Oliver’s life and singular career. —Paulina Prosnitz