Awards
Winner of the 2002 National Book Award for Poetry
Synopses & Reviews
Ruth Stone has rightly been called America’s Akhmatova, and she is considered "Mother Poet" to many contemporary writers. In this, her eighth volume, she writes with crackling intelligence, interrogating history from the vantage point of an aging and impoverished woman. Wise, sardonic, crafty, and misleadingly simple, Stone loves heavy themes but loathes heavy poems.
Shapes
In the longer view it doesn’t matter.
However, it’s that having lived, it matters.
So that every death breaks you apart.
You find yourself weeping at the door
of your own kitchen, overwhelmed
by loss. And you find yourself weeping
as you pass the homeless person
head in hands resigned on a cement
step, the wire basket on wheels right there.
Like stopped film, or a line of Vallejo,
or a sketch of the mechanics of a wing
by Leonardo. All pauses in space,
a violent compression of meaning
in an instant within the meaningless.
Even staring into the dim shapes
at the farthest edge; accepting that blur.
"Ruth Stone’s work is alternately witty, bawdy, touching, and profound. But never pompous. Her honesty and originality give her writing a sense of youth and newness because she looks at the world so clearly, without all the detritus of social convention the rest of us pick up along the way… Her writing proves her to be simply inspired."—USA Today
Ruth Stone was born in Virginia in 1915. She is author of eight books of poems and recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1959, after her husband committed suicide, she was forced to raise three daughters alone. For twenty years she traveled the US, teaching creative writing at many universities, finally settling at SUNY Binghamton. She lives in Vermont.
Review
"As Ruth Stone grows older, her poems turn devastating without abandoning the absolute resolution she learned back in the 1950's." Harvard Review
Review
"Ruth Stone's work is alternately witty, bawdy, touching, and profound....Her honesty and originality give her writing a sense of youth and newness because she looks at the world so clearly....Her writing proves to be simply inspired." USA Today
Review
"A Ruth Stone poem feels alive in the hands ardent, independent, restless....She sometimes has the sound of a prophet." Sharon Olds
Review
"Ruth Stone began late, achieving her most powerful works with maturity and continuing their scope and span into age where most poets fall into silence or repetition." Drunken Boat
Synopsis
At eighty-six, National Book Critics Circle Award winnder Ruth Stone is considered "Mother Poet" to many contemporary writers. In this, her eighth volume, she continues her long practice of piercing directly to life's poetic truth. She writes with a crackling intelligence, interrogating history from the vantage point of an aging and impoverished woman. Wise, sardonic, crafty, and misleadingly simple, Stone loves heavy themes but not heavy poems.
Synopsis
Poetry. Ruth Stone has rightly been called America's Akhmatova, and she is considered "Mother Poet" to many contemporary writers. In this, her eighth volume, she writes with crackling intelligence, interrogating history from the vantage point of an aging and impoverished woman. Wise, sardonic, crafty, and misleadingly simple, Stone loves heavy themes but loathes heavy poems. "Ruth Stone's work is alternatively witty, bawdy, touching, and profound. But never pompous. Her honesty and originality give her writing a sense of youth and newness because she looks at the world so clearly, without all the detritus of social convention the rest of us pick up along the way . . . Her writing proves her to be simply inspired"-USA Today.
Synopsis
Exquisite new work from winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.
About the Author
Ruth Stone was born in Virginia in 1915. She is author of eight books of poems and recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1959, after her husband committed suicide, she was forced to raise three daughters alone. For twenty years she traveled the US, teaching creative writing at many universities, finally settling at SUNY Birghamton. She lives in Vermont.