Ruth Stone was an American poet and author of thirteen books of poetry. She received the 2002 National Book Award (for her collection In the Next Galaxy), the 2002 Wallace Stevens Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Eric Mathieu King Award from The Academy of American Poets, a Whiting Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Delmore Schwartz Award, the Cerf Lifetime Achievement Award from the state of Vermont, and the Shelley Memorial Award. In July 2007, she was named poet laureate of Vermont.
After her husband committed suicide in 1959, Stone was forced to raise her three daughters alone as she traveled the US, teaching creative writing at many universities, including the University of Illinois, University of Wisconsin, Indiana University, University of California Davis, Brandeis, and finally settling at State University of New York Binghamton.
She died at her home in Ripton, Vermont, in 2011. She was 96 years old.
Poetry seems to be saturated with "godly" voices booming omnisciently about grand themes of vast social importance. This poetry gets exhausting. Stone, however, is refreshingly ungodlike and doesn't pretend toward any grandiose delusions of self importance.
The poems about her husband's suicide are breathtaking and lovely, and while I'm not the biggest fan of the selection from "Cheap," her newer writing is beautiful. A favorite line, "Shaking my head at the shame of anything that lies down and dies" (from "Poles").
went searching for this book in the howe after reading “curtains” in creative writing and found it hidden on the third floor. ruth is incredible, i can’t even begin to understand her work or even describe it, all i can say is this is highly worth the read. i felt very connected to ruth, especially as she wrote about vermont quite frequently, i’m glad i was able to seek her out