Ruth Stone

Ruth Stone (June 8, 1915 – November 19, 2011) was an American poet. She was published widely in periodicals throughout her career and was the author of thirteen collections, as well as a teacher at many schools before finding stable tenure at Binghamton University in 1990, in her 70s. She found wide recognition late in life, in her 80s, winning a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1999 for the collection Ordinary Words, a National Book Award for Poetry and Wallace Stevens Award in 2002 for the collection In the Next Galaxy, becoming Poet Laureate of Vermont in 2007, and becoming a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2009 for the collection What Love Comes To.

From 1957 Stone lived out of a home in Goshen, Vermont that is now registered as a historic place in her honor, the Ruth Stone House, and is run as a writer's retreat by a foundation led by her granddaughter Bianca Stone, who is also a poet and became Poet Laureate of Vermont herself in 2024. Her life and poetry was the subject of the documentary Ruth Stone's Vast Library of the Female Mind (2021).

Early life and education Stone was born Ruth Swan Perkins on June 8, 1915 in Roanoke, Virginia and lived there until the age of six, when her family moved back to her parents' hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana. By age five or six she had already begun writing poetry.

She married chemist John Clapp in 1935, then moved to Illinois, where she attended the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and they had one daughter. Walter Stone served in World War II, received a PhD from Harvard University, then taught as a professor and poet at the University of Illinois and then at Vassar College. With Walter, Ruth had two more daughters. She achieved wide recognition late in her career, after her collection Ordinary Words was published in 1999 and won a National Book Critics Circle Award. Her next collection, In the Next Galaxy (2002) was awarded the National Book Award for Poetry and she won the 2002 Wallace Stevens Award, and she became Poet Laureate of Vermont in 2007. Her 2008 What Love Comes To: New & Selected Poems was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. and a Kenyon Review Fellowship in Poetry for 1956,

In the same year, while the family was in England for her husband's sabbatical from teaching at Vassar College, he committed suicide. The Goshen house became a refuge for Stone after Walter's death, and over the years, it became an intellectual center for her students and other poets. and taught at Indiana University alongside Sandra Gilbert. finally becoming a tenured professor of English and Creative Writing in 1990.

Stone left her estate to a trust with three trustees: two granddaughters, Nora Croll and the poet and cartoonist Bianca Stone, and fellow Vermont poet Chard DeNiord.

A Ruth Stone Poetry Prize is awarded by the Vermont College of Fine Arts and their literary journal Hunger Mountain.

Stone's daughters by Walter, Phoebe Stone and Abigail Stone,

Ruth Stone's papers reside at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia.

Awards Poetry Magazine Bess Hokin Prize, 1953 Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, 1963–1965 Guggenheim Fellowship, Poetry, 1971 Guggenheim Fellowship, Poetry, 1975 Cerf Lifetime Achievement Award, State of Vermont, 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry for Ordinary Words, 1999

The voice of Ruth Stone reading her poem "Be Serious" is featured in the 2005 film USA The Movie.

A documentary film about Stone by Nora Jacobson, Ruth Stone's Vast Library of the Female Mind, was released in 2022. ; Bloodaxe Books. UK edition. 2009. . Copper Canyon Press. 2007. . Winner of the National Book Award. Ordinary Words. Paris Press. 1999. . Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Simplicity. Paris Press. 1995. . Who is the Widow's Muse? Yellow Moon Press. 1991. . The Solution. Alembic Press, Ltd. 1989. . Second Hand Coat: Poems New and Selected. David R. Godine. 1987; Yellow Moon Press. 1991. . American Milk. From Here Press. 1986. . Cheap: New Poems and Ballads. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1975. . Unknown Messages. Nemesis Press. 1973. Topography and Other Poems. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1971. . In an Iridescent Time. Harcourt, Brace. 1959. .