In the Dark

Ruth Stone

Winner of the 2005 Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement, In the Dark is the follow-up to Ruth Stone’s National Book Award-winning In the Next Galaxy. Here Stone returns to themes of memory, aging, and loss. Balancing her own personal history against profound political and cultural changes, she continues with direct witty poems which do not flinch when addressing issues of power and oppression. She has been called a “people’s poet” and “America’s Akhmatova,” writing a poetry of everyday life which recasts the mundane as important and indispensable. 

Paperback: $15.00 list price

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Hardcover $22.00 list price

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ISBN: 9781556592508

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9781556592102

Format: Hardcover

About the Author

Ruth Stone (1915–2011) was born in Virginia. She is the author of thirteen books of poetry, including In the Next Galaxy, which won the 2002 National Book Award, and her collected poems, What Love Comes To, which was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. Her 1999 collection Ordinary Words won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1999. She is the recipient of many additional honors, including two Guggenheim Fellowships (one of which roofed her house). In 1959, after …

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Reviews

“Stone appeals to the mind’s eye and the physical ear… a clarion collection by a National Book Award-winning, and profoundly rewarding poet.” —Booklist

“An aging poet’s failing eyesight informs this collection of 94 new poems, 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

“Stone’s gift to the reader is poetry that is clear, compact and compassionate… Surviving to near the close of her eighth decade, Stone naturally sees mortality as a recurring theme in her poetry. But the vision is not a monster. Rather, it is an opportunity to put her poetic skills unapologetically on display for the reader to marvel at metaphor meant to reveal.” —Home News Tribune