[bksvol-discuss] Re: Seeing in the dark: At 89, going blind,Ruth Stone deepens her poetic vision.

"Shelley L. Rhodes" <juddysbuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx> · Wed, 29 Dec 2004 23:17:18 -0500

You know I think it would be cool if someone could find this one.

I am interested in it.

Shelley L. Rhodes and Judson, guiding golden
juddysbuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Guide Dogs For the Blind Inc.
Graduate Advisory Council
www.guidedogs.com

The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to
stare up the steps - we must step up the stairs.

      -- Vance Havner
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "bob tweedy" <rtweedy2@xxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, December 28, 2004 11:15 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Seeing in the dark: At 89, going blind,Ruth 
Stone deepens her poetic vision.

Is anyone wanting IN THE DARK? I will if I can find it.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Shelley L. Rhodes" <juddysbuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>;
<blindbooks@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, December 28, 2004 9:55 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Seeing in the dark: At 89, going blind,Ruth Stone
deepens her poetic vision.

>
>
> Wichita Eagle, Kansas
> Sunday, December 19, 2004
>
> Seeing in the dark: At 89, going blind, Ruth Stone deepens her poetic
> vision.
>
> By ARLICE DAVENPORT
>
> "In the Dark" by Ruth Stone (Copper Canyon Press, $22)
>
> Half-blind, it is always twilight.
>
> The dusk of my time and the nights
>
> are so long, and the days of my tribe
>
> flash by, their many-colored cars
>
> choking the air, and I lie like a shah
>
> on my divan in this 21st century
>
> mosque, indifferent to my folded
>
> flesh that falls in on itself.
>
> Ruth Stone knows that poetry is meant to be heard, not seen.
>
> Her new book, "In the Dark," masterfully shows how poetry's elevated
> language can bring the world to vivid life, even without the gift of
> sight.
>
> Indeed, when done right, poetry turns revelatory, shedding light on the
> ever-encroaching darkness of our mortality and calling forth what lies
> hidden in shadow:
>
> Then why this happiness in muted things?
>
> Some equation of time and space,
>
> a slowed perception of the battered brain
>
> strips back like leaves to unexpected glittering.
>
> Two of the Western world's greatest poets knew this power firsthand: Homer
> and John Milton both ended their lives blind. Now Stone seems likely to
> join
> them.
>
> At 89, steadily losing her eyesight, she has mined a rich artistic vision
> from her disability. "In the Dark," arguably her strongest book, maps the
> uneasy encounter between cosmos and self, the quest to find a lasting
> meaning in the intricacies of the mundane.
>
> Her only tool of discovery, she tells us, is language:
>
> Having come this far
>
> with a handful of alphabet,
>
> I am forced,
>
> with these few blocks,
>
> to invent the universe.
>
> The universe of "In the Dark" builds brilliantly on the success of "In the
> Next Galaxy," which won the National Book Award in 2002 and introduced
> Stone
> to a wider reading public.
>
> That recognition was a long time coming. Stone has been writing poetry for
> nearly 50 years, but her earlier work was overshadowed by her male peers.
> Then her personal world was shattered when her husband committed suicide.
>
> As she fought to recover from this loss, raising three daughters on a farm
> in Vermont, she cultivated an ear for the startling phrase and incisive
> existential detail.
>
> Tuesday and I am still in the coils
>
> of this serpent masking as a vein.
>
> It has swallowed so much. I am the half-
>
> swallowed toad still kicking in the throat.
>
> Stone's diction has also ripened with age: spare, elemental, intrinsically
> rhythmic. Her poems sound the depths of everyday experience but resonate
> with a dreamlike intensity.
>
> Even so, there is no easy optimism in "In the Dark," no pat reconciliation
> of infinity and mortality.
>
> O language that follows like the comet's tail;
>
> the rubble of senseless longing
>
> for what was.
>
> Such longing can be the stuff of hope, however. And as cosmos and self
> circle each other in Stone's poetics of encounter, we watch our own vision
> grow richer and brighter because of her courageous seeing in the dark.
>
> Reach Arlice Davenport at 268-6256 or adavenport@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> http://www.kansas.com/mld/eagle/entertainment/books/10449643.htm
>
>
>
>
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>

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