Mary Oliver: Stage Fright

Pulitzer Prize-winner Mary Oliver was clearly nervous when she looked out from behind the stage curtains of John M. Greene Hall and saw that every seat in the auditorium was occupied. “The tears came to her eyes,” says Watson. Nonetheless, Oliver went out before the crowd “and gave an incredibly communicative, generous reading. I think in a small town like this, she just couldn’t imagine how 1,500 to 1,600 people would come to see her. That was a glorious, glorious thing.” Oliver read at Smith in 2000 and then again in 2009.