Mary Oliver: “How to Love This World” — The Spirituality of Favorite Poems and Poets

Presented by Br. Mark D’Alessio

9:30 AM 3:00 PM

We live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood…” (Mary Oliver)

What’s your favorite poem? For many, it’s a poem by Mary Oliver, far and away America’s best-selling poet who was honored with both the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize. Her poetry has been a source of inspiration for many on the spiritual path. Yet, who were Mary Oliver’s favorite poets and inspirations? What were some of her favorite poems?

Join us in person at Wisdom House for a quiet day where we will contemplatively spend time exploring the thoughtful ways of Oliver’s poetry alongside poems from some of her influential idols — Sufi mystic Rumi, American transcendentalist Walt Whitman, romantic Shelley, humanist Denise Levertov, and feminist Edna St. Vincent Millay.

“How to Love this World” is an invitation to poets and poetry as spiritual practice. Join Br. Mark to explore the mystery, grace and sacred wholeness we share in common with Oliver and her inspirations as she invites us into a space that one of her poems calls “the doorway/into thanks, and a silence in which/another voice may speak.” Come and be inspired by how Oliver experienced a sense of the world’s wonders as gifts to be savored!

$60 | Lunch Included

Wisdom House Retreat & Conference Center
229 East Litchfield Road
Litchfield, CT, 06759
https://www.wisdomhouse.org/program-calendar/maryoliver2023-ewbnowiihwhf