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by Ruth Stone (Author)
"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.
Author Biography
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.
