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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[1] and lived there until the age of six, when her family moved back to her parents’ hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana.[2][3] By age five or six she had already begun writing poetry.[4]

She married chemist John Clapp in 1935, then moved to Illinois, where she attended the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign[5] and they had one daughter.[3] She had an affair with graduate student and aspiring poet Walter B. Stone while married, divorced Clapp, and then married Stone in 1945.[4][6] 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.[7] With Walter, Ruth had two more daughters.[3]

Career

Stone 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,[8] 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.[5]

She earned earlier professional recognition as a poet through the Poetry Magazine Bess Hokin Prize in 1953[9] and a Kenyon Review Fellowship in Poetry for 1956,[10] earning money she immediately put towards purchasing an old farmhouse in Goshen, Vermont, now the historic Ruth Stone House, where she would live from 1957 on.[4][7] She published her first collection of poems, In an Iridescent Time, in 1959.[5] Kenneth Rexroth reviewed it for The New York Times, praising it as skillful and true though also ordinary and academic.[11]

In the same year, while the family was in England for her husband’s sabbatical from teaching at Vassar College, he committed suicide.[6] This tragedy made Stone a widow with three young daughters and shaped the path of her later life, as she sought ways to support herself and her daughters by teaching poetry at universities across the United States.[5] Her short-term teaching positions included the University of Illinois, Wellesley College, New York University, the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University, Centre College, the University of California, Davis, and Brandeis University.[4][12][13] 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.[7]

One of her important early short-term positions was a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, 1963–1965, at the end of which she was also awarded an associated Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, 1965.[12][14] However, she spent the 60s in intermittent depression and her next collection, 1971’s Topography and Other Poems, was noted for its tones of grief and anger.[12] In the first half of the 1970s, she won two Guggenheim Fellowships (1971 and 1975)[15][16] and taught at Indiana University alongside Sandra Gilbert.[4] She published Unknown Messages in 1973 and Cheap: New Poems and Ballads in 1975.[4][5]

In 1988, Stone became a visiting professor at Binghamton University and accepted a permanent position a year later,[17] finally becoming a tenured professor of English and Creative Writing in 1990.[4] She retired emeritus from this position at the age of 85[3] as the named chair the Bartle professor of English.[17]

Stone’s verse was published widely in periodicals, and she was the author of thirteen books of poetry.[5][18] Her work is distinguished by its tendency to draw imagery and language from the natural sciences.

Paintbrush: A Journal of Poetry and Translation issue 27 (2000/2001) was devoted entirely to Stone’s work.

Death, legacy, and archive

Stone died at her daughter’s home in Ripton, Vermont, on November 19, 2011.[3][6] She was buried near the raspberry bushes behind her Goshen, Vermont home.[19]

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.[7] The trust was charged with restoring her Goshen house.[7] This long-time residence was restored and then listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016 as the Ruth Stone House. Her heirs (both literary and family) established the Ruth Stone House Foundation to convert the property into a writer’s retreat.[20][21]

A Ruth Stone Poetry Prize is awarded by the Vermont College of Fine Arts and their literary journal Hunger Mountain.[22]

Stone’s daughters by Walter, Phoebe Stone and Abigail Stone,[6] and her granddaughters Hillery Stone and Bianca Stone, are all published writers. Bianca edited a collection of her grandmother’s poetry, The Essential Ruth Stone, published 2020,[4] and became Poet Laureate of Vermont herself in 2024.[23]

Ruth Stone’s papers reside at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia.[24]

Awards

Cultural references

Stone was the subject of a Sidney Wolinsky short film in 1973, “The Excuse.”[27]

The voice of Ruth Stone reading her poem “Be Serious” is featured in the 2005 film USA The Movie.[28]

A documentary film about Stone by Nora Jacobson, Ruth Stone’s Vast Library of the Female Mind, was released in 2022.[29][27]

Bibliography

References

  1. ^ “Stone, Ruth”. Library of Congress. August 4, 2025. Retrieved April 7, 2026.
  2. ^ a b c d e Beal, Jane (2016). “Ruth Stone”. American Writers Supplement. Gale. pp. 249–65.
  3. ^ a b c d e Langer, Emily (27 November 2011). “Ruth Stone, poet who won acclaim later in her life, dies at 96”. The Washington Post. Retrieved 9 April 2022.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Rooney, Kathleen (September 28, 2020). “Cry Until You Laugh”. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved April 7, 2026.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k “Ruth Stone”. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved April 7, 2026.
  6. ^ a b c d Grimes, William (November 24, 2011). “Ruth Stone, a Poet Celebrated Late in Life, Dies at 96”. The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 14, 2012, most other sources contradict “died at her home in Ripton, VT”: her home was in Goshen, while other sources say her daughter’s home in Ripton.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  7. ^ a b c d e Stone, Bianca (March 18, 2015). “The House With Feet: The Dire Importance of Ruth Stone’s Bequest”. VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. Archived from the original on May 13, 2015. Retrieved April 9, 2022.
  8. ^ a b “Wallace Stevens Award”. Academy of American Poets. Retrieved April 8, 2026.
  9. ^ a b “2017 Prizes for Contributors to Poetry Announced”. Poetry Foundation. August 24, 2017. Retrieved April 8, 2026.
  10. ^ a b “Past Fellows”. The Kenyon Review. Archived from the original on April 12, 2022. Retrieved April 9, 2022.
  11. ^ Rexroth, Kenneth (December 27, 1959). “Controlled Excitement”. The New York Times. Retrieved April 12, 2026.
  12. ^ a b c d e f Payne, Craig (2023). “Ruth Stone”. EBSCO Research Starters. Retrieved April 8, 2026.
  13. ^ “Ruth Stone”. Copper Canyon Press. Retrieved April 8, 2026.
  14. ^ a b “Shelley Winners [1930–2018]”. Poetry Society of America. Archived from the original on May 25, 2019.
  15. ^ a b c “Ruth Stone”. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 2022-04-09.
  16. ^ a b “Ruth Stone: 1986 Winner in Poetry”. Whiting Foundation. Retrieved April 10, 2026.
  17. ^ a b “Poet Ruth Stone named National Book Award finalist”. Discover-e: Binghamton Research. November 18, 2002. Retrieved April 13, 2026.
  18. ^ “Ruth Stone”. The Daily Telegraph. London. January 1, 2012.
  19. ^ “About Ruth Stone: Her Land”. RuthStoneHouse.org. Goshen, VT: Ruth Stone House. Retrieved February 21, 2023.
  20. ^ “Riverviews’ ‘Rebus’ exhibit showcases poetry comics”. BURG, March 5, 2014 Brent Wells.
  21. ^ “Late Poet Laureate Ruth Stone’s Goshen home is coming back to life”. Addison Independent. November 28, 2016. Retrieved 2016-12-13.
  22. ^ “Hunger Mountain – VCFA Journal of the Arts”. Archived from the original on 2018-07-24. Retrieved 2018-09-10.
  23. ^ O’Connor, Kevin (2024-05-01). “3rd-generation writer Bianca Stone named Vermont’s new poet laureate”. VTDigger. Retrieved 2024-09-17.
  24. ^ “Ruth Stone papers: Content description”. University of Virginia Library Manuscripts and Archival Material. Retrieved April 7, 2026.
  25. ^ a b “Visiting Poet: Ruth Stone”. Smith College. Retrieved April 8, 2026.
  26. ^ “Walter Cerf Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts”. Vermont Arts Council. Retrieved April 11, 2026.
  27. ^ a b Weedon, Travis (January 12, 2022). “Visual Poetry at the Savoy”. The Bridge. Retrieved April 14, 2026.
  28. ^ “Ruth Stone (1915-2011)”. IMDb. Retrieved April 14, 2026.
  29. ^ Lefrak, Mikaela; Smith, Matthew F. (January 14, 2022). “Norwich filmmaker premieres documentary on Vermont poet laureate Ruth Stone”. Vermont Public. Retrieved April 14, 2026.
  30. ^ “Poetry”. Past winners & finalists by category. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2012-04-08.
  31. ^ “National Book Awards – 2002”. National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-04-08.
    (With acceptance speech by Stone, announcement by Poetry Panel Chair Dave Smith, and essay by Katie Peterson from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)