In the Dark

By Ruth Stone

Book Overview

"An aging poet's failing eyesight informs this collection . . . some of which recall the spirit of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. Dark but not hopeless, they spring from Stone's lucid inner vision, which is straightforward, musical, and defiant."-- Utne Now available in paperback, In the Dark, winner of the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement, is Ruth Stone's follow-up to her National Book Award--winning In the Next Galaxy. Personal issues of memory, aging, and loss are balanced against profound political and cultural change. Stone has been called a "people's poet" whose work is "profoundly rewarding," and she writes a poetry of everyday life that recasts the mundane as indispensable. When asked whether poets improve with age, Stone, then eighty-nine, replied: "There's no question." 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1556592507
• ISBN13: 9781556592508
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
• Length: 120 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.1" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Wonderful Stones!

Ruth Stone's poetry has often been seen as melancholic or "dark" ; but her more recent pieces have an edge, a fierceness of diction and imagery that startles the reader. "Living in hell, as I do, the devil lies in my ear. Violent endings, devastation, I am either the shipped out cargo ..." ("The Jewels") etc. Her National Book Award "In the Next Galaxy" carries her voice to greater peaks still. That voice will never grow old... different, yes, but rejuvenated.

compex and biting

Ruth Stone's poetry is inspiring,yet bitter in it's message on aging and loosing one's sight...

fetching poems by 89 year old blind woman

IN THE DARK by Ruth Stone. Copper Canyon Press, PO Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368; www.coppercanyonpress.org; angela@coppercanyonpress.org. 110+x pp. $22.00 hardcover, ISBN 1-55659-210-8. Ruth Stone is 89, and nearly totally blind. At this age and with this condition, memories make up the substance of her life. For her, memory is virtually a sensation; memory brings her into an intimacy with her surroundings and her past. Feelings and moods are not transient for her. Rather, they are entire universes of different aspects of the world and existence. The "sadness of things/speaks for you." (from "Interim") The flower beds and lawns of a small college--one where Stone likely taught at one time--intone the "quiet authority of culture." (from "Border") The title is somewhat ironic, for Stone illumines her subjects in an almost preternatural way.