Poetry Alive! Ruth Stone Reading from Ordinary Words and Simplicity

by Ruth Stone

Ruth Stone was the winner of the most recent National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.
The first in a new series of Paris Press CD's, Ruth Stone reads from her National Book Critics Circle Award winning poems. "Poetry Alive!" reveals Stone's fabulous reading style-musical, funny, acerbic, and sorrowful. This CD will be a favorite for the young at heart and the weary, for poetry novices and poetry stars, for all of Stone's beloved listeners and readers-her all-American and international knee-slapping fans.
"Good Advice"
"Here is not exactly here
because it passed by there
two seconds ago;
where it will not come back.
Although you adjust to this-
it's nothing, you say,
just the way it is.
How poor we are,
with all this running
through our fingers.
"Here," says the Devil,
"Eat. It's Paradise.""
Ruth Stone was born in 1915 in Roanoke, Virginia. The recipient of numerous accolades, such as the Whiting Award and the Delmore Schwartz Award, Stone received tenure from SUNY Binghamton at the age of 75, and she continues to teach full time. Ruth Stone has been writing since the age of three; she has published 11 books and has a devoted following of young and old students, writers, and readers. New York State Poet Laureate Sharon Olds calls Stone her "Mother poet." And so do many other poets throughout the country. Stone is funny, wise, and sharply honest. She lives in Vermont.
Also available by Ruth Stone
"Ordinary Words"
HC $19.95, 0-9638183-9-2 CUSA
PB $14.95, 0-9638183-8-4 CUSA
"Simplicity"
PB $12.95, 0-9638183-1-7 CUSA

Audio CD

First published September 1, 2000

About the author

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.