Jenna Bush Hager says her December 2024 book club pick is ‘cathartic and beautiful’

This December, Jenna Bush Hager is celebrating the work of one of her favorite poets: Mary Oliver. “I find her poetry to be so cathartic and beautiful,” Jenna tells TODAY.com.

This month’s pick is “Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver,” a collection of over 200 poems from the course of Oliver’s career.

The poet died in 2019 at the age of 83, leaving a beloved body of work. Oliver was known for celebrating the natural world and life itself in instantly moving poems like “Wild Geese,” “Don’t Hesitate” and “The Summer Day.”

“I love her work. It’s about nature and love and what it means to be human,” Jenna says.

"Devotions" by Mary Oliver

"Devotions" by Mary Oliver

$12.00

$31.00

Amazon

$17.99

$20.00

Barnes and Noble

$18.60

$20.00

Bookshop.org

Poetry plays a “therapeutic” and significant role in Jenna’s life, she says.

“When I’m unsure of the world there are a few things I can do: I can go outside and be in nature. I can lean into my faith. Or something else really therapeutic is reading poetry. I am constantly sending poems to friends and family that describe how I’m feeling on certain days,” she says.

Her love for poetry was instilled in her by grandmothers, Jenna Hawkins Welch and Barbara Bush.

“I grew up with two grandmothers that loved poetry so much. My grandmother Jenna, whom I’m named after, would read to us from her poetry books when we laid out on a blanket in her yard in Midland, Texas, looking at the stars. It’s one of my favorite memories that I have with my grandmother, sister and my mom,” she says.

Jenna has a special connection to Oliver: She read her poem “When I Am Among the Trees” at her grandmother Jenna Hawkins Welch’s funeral in May 2019.

When Oliver died months earlier, Jenna shared a tribute to the poet, writing, “Your poems brought us all such happiness, such beautiful inspiration. I will live this wild and wonderful life going back to read your poetry often.”