Ruth Stone who died in 2011 at the age of 97 was one of those classic poets, much honored by the establishment (a National Book Critics Cirlce Award, a National Book Award, finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, and the recipient of the Wallace Stevens Award),  much read and admired by other poets, but little known by the general reader until quite late in her life.

I came across her work many years ago because like Galway Kinnell, Louise Gluck, Ellen Voight, Haydn Carruth, and Robert Frost, she labored at her verse in my adopted state of Vermont where it seems like there is a poet behind every tree, and there are lots and lots of trees.

Stone is not a happy poet.  Divorced from an abusive husband while still in her 20’s, she fell deeply in love with a Jewish poet, Walter Stone, married him, had three daughters, bought an old farmhouse in northern Vermont, lived in NYC and wrote poetry.  Poor but happy, her life and her work changed forever when Stone hung himself by his necktie in a rented room in London without warning, note, or any explanation. That event came to define Stone’s work as she grieved through her work for the rest of her life.  Living in near poverty (note the title of this collection), she produced 13 volumes of poetry, and her ramschackle house served as a gathering spot for poets including Sharon Olds, Major Jackson, Chard deNiord, and others.

The poet Sharon Gilbert, an early champion of Stone’s, noted that the “special boldness” of Stone’s poetry is “at least in part a product of the pain and loss she’s had to confront, the perilous life she’s lived at the edge of comforts most other people of letters take for granted in our society … her extraordinary words are among those that will flow through the valley of our saying from here to there, from now to then, into the farthest reaches of the twenty-first century and beyond.”

Her poetry is powerful but not happy.  Loss, suicide, death, poverty, anger all appear, but the verses and language are brilliant.  If you’re at all inclined, I’d suggest reading this book after watching a documentary made by her granddaughter and available on Prime.  “Ruth Stone: The Vast Library of the Female Mind” is a wonderful intro to this talented and troubled poet.  Highly recommended.