false<![CDATA[Ordinary Words]]>http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173466334m/292950.jpg2929502"You think it horrible that lust and rage / Should dance attention upon my old age," wrote W.B. Yeats in one of his many, memorable testimonies on behalf of eternal youth. At 85, Ruth Stone has refrained (as far as I know) from the sort of chemical fixes and elixirs that intrigued her Irish predecessor. But she too has remained open to eros and anger, despair and delight, and steadfastly avoided the sort of golden-hued nostalgia that has ruined many an older poet.<p> <I>Ordinary Words</I>, which won the 1999 National Book Critics Circle Award, is an excellent specimen of Stone's art. She has a superb eye for landscape, noting both the beauty of the natural world and the dispiriting thumbprints that human beings leave behind: "As now, another snowfall / sculptures an unreality, clean and fresh, / bringing down in its light crystals / industrial particulates as it settles." This note of ecological protest, here subsumed in Latinate playfulness, can sometimes mar Stone's poetry, and the same thing might be said of her mini-manifesto against consumer culture, "Incredible Buys In." She's much stronger when delving less deliberately into what she calls "that vast / confused library, the female mind." Over and over she emerges with astonishing prizes, from the dizzy imagery of "Prefab" to the stirring snapshot of bereavement in "Then": <blockquote> In our loss we accepted the strange shape of things<br> as though it had meaning for us,<br> as though we moved slowly over the acreage,<br> as though the ground modulated like water.<br> The floors and the cupboards slanted to the West,<br> the house sinking toward the evening side of the sky.<br> The children and I sitting together waiting,<br> there on the back porch, the massive engine<br> of the storm swelling up through the undergrowth,<br> pounding toward us.<br> </blockquote> Despite 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. <I>--James Marcus</I>2842411999Ordinary Wordstotal:23|5:8|4:10|3:5|239533000falsefalseThu Nov 19 01:21:20 -0800 2009Thu Nov 19 01:21:20 -0800 200900falsefalseSat Aug 01 11:56:33 -0700 2009Sat Aug 01 11:56:33 -0700 200950falsefalseThu Jul 16 03:37:26 -0700 2009Thu Jul 16 03:37:26 -0700 200930falsefalseWed Jun 17 14:29:05 -0700 2009Wed Jun 17 14:29:05 -0700 200950falsefalseTue Jun 09 13:34:35 -0700 2009Tue Jun 09 13:34:35 -0700 200950falsefalseWed May 20 19:01:22 -0700 2009Wed May 20 19:01:22 -0700 200940falsefalseThu May 14 14:02:34 -0700 2009Thu May 14 14:02:34 -0700 200900falsefalseWed Mar 11 16:46:03 -0700 2009Wed Mar 11 16:46:06 -0700 200900falsefalseTue Mar 03 05:55:22 -0800 2009Tue Mar 03 05:55:22 -0800 200900falsefalseWed Feb 11 05:43:36 -0800 2009Wed Feb 11 05:43:36 -0800 200940falsefalseThu Jan 22 11:48:26 -0800 2009Thu Jan 22 11:48:26 -0800 200900falsefalseSun Nov 02 18:57:42 -0800 2008Sun Nov 02 18:57:48 -0800 200840falsefalseSun Nov 02 17:04:47 -0800 2008Sun Nov 02 17:04:47 -0800 200800falsefalseSat Aug 09 15:23:42 -0700 2008Sat Aug 09 15:23:42 -0700 200850falsefalseThu Jul 24 11:36:36 -0700 2008Thu Jul 24 11:36:36 -0700 200830falsefalseSun Jul 27 00:00:00 -0700 2008Tue Jul 08 15:23:06 -0700 2008Tue Nov 25 04:11:49 -0800 200800falsefalseWed Apr 23 17:28:56 -0700 2008Wed Apr 23 17:28:56 -0700 200850falsefalseThu Apr 10 06:12:15 -0700 2008Thu Apr 10 06:12:15 -0700 200850falsefalseThu Mar 27 13:27:54 -0700 2008Thu Mar 27 13:27:54 -0700 200850falsefalseFri Mar 14 11:59:53 -0700 2008Fri Mar 14 11:59:53 -0700 2008
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