In our loss we accepted the strange shape of thingsDespite the damp fizzle of the final line, this gets right to the heart of our sorrowing, queasy communion with the dead. And it confirms that when Ruth Stone hits her stride, as she often does throughout this collection, the words that she deploys with such low-key panache are anything but ordinary. --James Marcus]]>
as though it had meaning for us,
as though we moved slowly over the acreage,
as though the ground modulated like water.
The floors and the cupboards slanted to the West,
the house sinking toward the evening side of the sky.
The children and I sitting together waiting,
there on the back porch, the massive engine
of the storm swelling up through the undergrowth,
pounding toward us.
Now available in paperback, In the Dark, winner of the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement, is Ruth Stone's follow-up to her National Book Award--winning In the Next Galaxy. Personal issues of memory, aging, and loss are balanced against profound political and cultural change. Stone has been called a "people's poet" whose work is "profoundly rewarding," and she writes a poetry of everyday life that recasts the mundane as indispensable. When asked whether poets improve with age, Stone, then eighty-nine, replied: "There's no question."
From "What is a Poem?":
Having come this far
with a handful of alphabet,
I am forced,
with these few blocks,
to invent the universe.
What Love Comes To gathers nearly half a century of poems from a National Book Award-winning poet who, over the course of her career, has written in a wide range of voices and forms. Drawing from eleven previous volumes, this collection offers a trajectory through that career, presenting Ruth Stone from her early formal lyrics, through fierce feminist and political poems, to her most recent meditations on blindness and aging. Stone, at age ninety-two, returns often to the theme of loss in her work, all the while maintaining what the Vermont poet laureate nominations committee calls "a sense of survival surpassing poverty and grief. . . . Her poetry's irrepressible humor and intellectual curiosity are unique among contemporary American poets."
What Love Comes To is the perfect entry point into Stone's world of serious laughter; of uncertainty and insight; of mystery and acceptance.
When I forget to weep,
I hear the peeping tree toads
creeping up the bark.
Love lies asleep
and dreams that everything
is in its golden net;
and I am caught there, too,
when I forget.
A recipient of the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Ruth Stone has taught at numerous American universities. The author of eleven books of poetry, she has lived in Vermont since 1957.
]]>Written by leading authors in the field, this book takes account of a variety of theoretical perspectives, including economic, relational and empirical conceptions of the law. A meticulous and insightful commentary is provided throughout, illuminating complex areas of law and promoting more detailed analysis of important issues.
Composed of one-quarter authors’ commentaries and three-quarters cases and materials, including academics' articles and extracts from books and Law Commission papers, this book facilitates the development of personal study skills and encourages readers to engage with the leading academic commentaries in the area, (extracts are included from the Principles of European Contract Law to create a solid foundation for comparative analysis). Clearly signposted chapter introductions (with short table of contents to aid navigation) highlight the salient features under discussion and learning support is provided in a regularly updated Companion Website. Additional reading collected at the end of each chapter guides further study and independent research.
The range of material covered and the straightforward style makes this book an invaluable resource for all undergraduate students of contract law.