In the Dark

In the Dark

by Ruth Stone
In the Dark

In the Dark

by Ruth Stone

Hardcover

$22.00 
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Overview

When asked whether poets improve with age Ruth Stone, 89, replied: “There’s no question. If your brain goes on and on, as it should under normal conditions, there’s more in it and your writing will get more profound.”

Year after year, Ruth Stone’s poems turn ever more penetrating. Fresh from her National Book Award, this prophetic new book is filled with winter, fractals, and passionate aging:

From “What is a Poem?”:

Having come this far with a handful of alphabet,
I am forced,
with these few blocks,
to invent the universe
.

Science, politics, art, and fellow small-town citizens all play pivotal roles in her poems. From the cilia in the ear of an owl to cheap paint peeling off the walls, Ruth Stone presents a world dissected and revealed:

From “The Driveway”:

Asphalt is a kind of urban lava flow that creeps from plot to plot along a street;
affluent, weedless, slow, and cancerous;
pressure from the magma populace for easy maintenance; neat status-symbolic,
easy to wash with the garden hose
.

“Her poems startle us over and over,” Galway Kinnell said when presenting Stone the Wallace Stevens Award, “with their shapeliness, their humor, their youthfulness, their wild aptness . . . the moral gulps they prompt, their fierce exactness of language and memory.”

Ruth Stone is the author of nine books of poetry. She is the recipient of the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Whiting Award (with which she bought plumbing for her house) and two Guggenheim Fellowships (one of which roofed her house). After her husband committed suicide, she was forced to raise three daughters alone. For twenty years she taught creative writing at many universities, finally settling at Binghamton University. Today, Ruth Stone lives in Vermont.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781556592102
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Publication date: 09/01/2004
Pages: 128
Product dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Ruth Stone was born in Virginia in 1915. She is the author of thirteen books of poetry and received the National Book Award in 2002 for In the Next Galaxy. Her other awards and honors include a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Whiting Award, and two Guggenheim fellowships. She lives in Vermont.

Hometown:

Goshen, Vermont and Binghamton, New York

Date of Birth:

June 8, 1915

Place of Birth:

Roanoke, Virginia

Education:

University of Illinois (no degree); B.A., Radcliffe Institute of Independent Study at Harvard University

Table of Contents

Accepting3
Another Day4
Another Feeling5
Full Moon6
An Imprint of the Roaring Twenties7
Becoming Vegetarian9
Bennington Bus Stop10
Body Language11
Bianca12
Walter, Upon Looking Around13
Between Men14
A Male Tale15
Calibrate16
Clay17
Cause and Effect18
Chausible Plausible19
Border20
Am I21
Consider This23
Almost the Same24
Currents25
Fragrance26
Always Icarus27
Elsie's Brooks28
Eta Carinae29
So30
And So Forth31
Cosmos33
Exotic Extras for Reading at City College34
Riding the Bubble36
Floaters37
From Outer Space38
The Self and the Universe39
Heaven40
Fear of the Doppelganger41
Ice42
How Can I?43
I Walk Alone44
In the Arts45
In the Free World46
Infrared47
Inner Truth48
Leap from a Footnote49
Interim51
Blizzard52
Drought Again55
Euphoria56
Writer's Block57
Clotheslines58
Living in the Past59
Margaret Street61
Man on the Ice62
March 200363
What Is a Poem?64
Menty Ears Ago65
My Mother's Phlox66
The Wailing Wall68
On the Dangerous Way69
Negative70
On the Outer Banks71
Pamphlet for Bullfrogs72
Pigs in Crisis73
Praise76
Mindless77
Pulsing78
Shark79
Spin80
The Driveway81
Laguna82
Storage83
That's Not Me84
Tell Me86
The Apex87
The Barrier88
The Gift from Isfahan89
The Jewels90
The Laying Down91
Orbits92
The Leaf93
The Old Story94
The Sadness of Lies95
Progress as Reported96
This Is What I Think97
This Day Brings a Slight Poem99
This Is How It Is100
Tools of the Psyche101
Trying to Write103
Visions104
Weathering105
What She Said106
Whither Weather107
What They Don't Tell Us About108
The Message109
The Cave110
About the Author113
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