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Ruth Stone was born
in Roanoke, Virginia.

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Her childhood and
adolescence were

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spent in Indianapolis, Indiana.

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She attended the
University of Illinois.

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After her marriage
to Walter Stone,

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poet, writer and scholar, critic,
she lived in Urbana, Illinois,

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in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
and in Poughkeepsie, New York

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while her husband
studied and taught

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at the University of
Illinois, and Harvard,

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and at Radcliffe,
and Vassar colleges.

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He died in 1959 while in England
doing research on a grant

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he had been awarded by the
American Philosophical Society.

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Mrs. Stone's poetry has
appeared in numerous magazines,

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including the New Yorker,
Commentary, The Saturday

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Review, The Nation,
Partisan Review, Poetry,

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Kenyon Review, and Accent.

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She has also published
short stories

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in the New Yorker
and Commentary.

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At the invitation
of Randall General,

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she has made a lengthy recording
of her poetry for The Library

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Of Congress, and under the
editorship of Oscar Williams

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for the Spoken Arts Anthology.

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Her book, In An Iridescent Time,
published in December 1959,

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by Harcourt, Brace, received
immediate critical acclaim

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from the critics among
whom might be listed;

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Richard Wilbur who thinks
her poem's so alive that he

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characterizes them
as firecrackers.

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Leslie Fiedler, Louis
Untermeyer, Babette Deutsch,

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and Robert Lowell.

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She has been
anthologized extensively

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appearing in such familiar works
as The New Pocket Anthology

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Of Modern Verse, The
Poems of 1956, I'm sorry.

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Conrad Aiken's Modern
American Poetry.

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Louis Untermeyer's Modern
British and American Poetry.

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Poets at Wesleyan,
and even a collection

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published in the
Philippine Islands.

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Her poems have won for her
several distinguished awards.

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The Best Poetry prize
from Poetry Magazine,

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a Kenyon Review fellowship
for 1955 and 1956,

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the Robert Frost
Fellowship at Bread Loaf.

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A Fellowship at the
Radcliffe Institute

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for Independent Studies,
and the Shelley award

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through the Poetry
Society of America.

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She has worked as a
literary and dramatic critic

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for The Indianapolis
Star, has spent a summer

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as poet in residence at
the University of Montana,

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and has taught
seminars in poetry

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at Radcliffe, Wellesley,
and Brandeis University.

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She is presently completing
another volume of poems

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to be published by Harcourt,
Brace and collaborating

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in an anthology of
poetry for children.

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The Ring Of Words
for Dial Press,

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which will appear next year.

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With her three
beautiful daughters

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she lives in West Newton,
Massachusetts, in a large house

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remarkable chiefly for a
continuous and chronic shortage

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of paper.

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What checks and stubs, envelopes
and wrappers, bills and scraps,

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not seized upon by our
poet are ruthlessly

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taken by her daughters and
made to bear poems, stories

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or paintings.

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Mrs. Stone's poems
overwhelm her all in a rush.

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She hears them coming
in her mind, most often

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in spring or autumn, and
is aware of an odd interior

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feeling that a poem has arrived.

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She writes them down upon
whatever comes to hand.

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A few years ago, I looked
out of my kitchen window

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in [ ? Flat ?], Illinois, to see her
lost in the bright sunshine

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and with a stubby pencil upon
a windblown scrap of paper,

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pursuing her art upon the
saddle of her bicycle.

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She is uneasy until
the poem is captured.

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Once caught upon paper,
it seems for Ruth,

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published with the
right incomes relief.

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The same poem reappears again
and again over the years.

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Suddenly she knows
that this time it's

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right, or at least
capable of that final home

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honing, which will satisfy her.

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Sometimes the poem is written
from the top down, line

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after line in all
but finished form.

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Very occasionally, it's
complete from the first.

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Others, the thing is done
from the center outwards.

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A middle line caught first,
and the beginning and ending

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added by accretion.

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And as yet, other
times, the poem

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is written in reverse
order from the last line

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through the final first.

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The process is labor
and fulfillment,

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and exhausting and
demanding delight.

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Thinking she has been working
only five minutes or so,

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she will suddenly become
aware that the sun is setting.

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She sang her children
asleep with impromptu poems

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and operas, a few of which have
been slyly captured upon tape

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by her eldest daughter,
and later put into print.

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At a summer home,
an old farmhouse

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in a wooded hill in Vermont,
shelters a huge filing case

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baled thick with poems
and poems coming,

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which she shamefully neglects.

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Her poetry ranges from the
innocent to the erotic,

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from peace to murder, from
the gentle to the savage.

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She will read tonight some
poems already published.

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And some that are to appear
in her forthcoming book.

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Ladies and gentlemen,
Mrs. Ruth Stone.

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