Faculty Profile: Finding art in unexpected, often painful places Professor Emerita of English Ruth Stone

For National Book Award winner Ruth Stone, poetry has always been part of life. Her mother read Tennyson to her as a baby. Her typesetter father would print copies of her poems and leave them lying on the kitchen table for 5-year-old Ruth to find. And, at 87, Stone still figures she's got a lot left to say and even more to share with the next generation.

Anne Rashid, a doctoral student who has taken National Book Award winner Ruth Stone's poetry workshop three times, reads with Stone in her poetry short course.

Stone, fresh from the national spotlight after winning two national prizes, was back on campus in March to share that love of poetry with students in a short course and with an overflow crowd at a public reading. She has annually made the trip from her home in Vermont to lead a two-week course on campus.

"Every year, I keep thinking it can't get any better," she said, beaming with pride. "But it does. I love the exchange, the play back and forth. It's a rare pleasure.

Anne Rashid, a doctoral student, has taken Stone's workshop three times. "Out of all the teachers I've had in creative writing, Ruth has pulled the most out of me," she said. "She has a way of opening herself up that makes everyone comfortable. She's taught me that you have to dig deep to find art in unexpected places -- places that sometimes can be very painful."

And pain is something Stone knows well. Born in Roanoke, Va., in 1915, she has led a sometimes harsh life. She married young and was widowed at 37, following her husband's suicide. As she struggled to raise three daughters, poetry took a backseat to her grief for a long time.

But, as Stone has often said, writing saved her life. At age 44, she published her first book, In an Iridescent Time. For the next 30 years, she took a variety of two or three-year teaching jobs on various campuses, including the University of Illinois, New York University and Brandeis University. In 1988, she settled at Binghamton, where she accepted her first permanent job, teaching in the creative writing program. Binghamton figures prominently in her three most recent collections, Simplicity, Ordinary Words and In the Next Galaxy:

Among the students between the
buildings,
the color of their clothes is a mirage of
tulips.
The lash of hot and cold upstate
New York mountain weather:
April splinters like an ice palace.

-- from "Visions from My Office
Window" in In the Next Galaxy

Stone's work is characterized by themes of love and loss, compassion and cynicism, and often very funny observations of a complex world. "It's not possible to have life without sorrow," she said. "But you have to write about it. Write more, do more and live in the moment."

Sharing the expressive wonder of words

Failing eyesight -- progressive macular degeneration -- forced Stone's retirement in December 2000, but she continues to teach the short course, which has become a mecca for budding poets. It's easy to see why students gather so willingly to her side.

Stone's sense of joy at the sound of poets reading aloud was visibly apparent as she leaned closer to catch every single word. And it's not because she's hard of hearing. It's as if she wanted to experience the words physically. The room became a sort of confessional as raw emotion was shared across the table. Tears and laughter punctuated with periods of thoughtful silence made a two-hour class seem half that long.

"Read that again, dear heart," she said, drinking in the words. She made a few suggestions here and there, but always with a sense of respect and encouragement. "Aren't they wonderful?" she asked. "And the secret to their wonderfulness is their freedom to bring out the accents to what has happened in their lives. It thickens the moment, which, as we all know, is so fleeting."

For Stone, it's the dialog between the writers that makes the class so exciting. "I can bring from my period, but they have what they know from their time," she said. "And if we share, that's kind of wonderful -- for me certainly, and, I hope, for them."

Recognition for a unique artist

Stone has published eight books of poetry, winning countless awards with her extraordinary words. The past year has been particularly eventful.

In November, she won the National Book Award for poetry for In the Next Galaxy (her most recent collection) and, in December, the Wallace Stevens Prize from the Academy of American Poets. In her customary modest style, she noted, "Appreciation is a nice thing. I certainly didn't expect the National Book Award, but the Wallace Stevens Prize really stunned me."

Stone also received an invitation from the White House to participate in the "Poetry and the American Voice" symposium, which was to be hosted by First Lady Laura Bush in February. The event was canceled, but Stone's public reading at BU drew a standing-room-only crowd. She also has plans to complete three more books, including a brand new collection.

-- Gail Glover '96, MASS '03