Tillie Olson, in the Iowa Review collection Extended Outlooks (1982), calls Ruth Stone "one of the major poets" of the latter twentieth century, describing her poetic voice as "clear, pure, fierce." Olson is not alone in her high praise for this poet. Patricia Blake in Time (22 December 1980) singles out Stone as one of the most powerful and sensuous of woman poets writing since Sappho. Sandra M. Gilbert (in Extended Outlooks) praises the "terrible clarity of her vision," and Julie Fay in the Women's Review of Books (July 1989) insists that a place be made for Stone "among the better-known poets of [her] generation." Frances Mayes, reviewing Stone's 1987 book, Second-Hand Coat, in the San Jose Mercury News (10 July 1988), observes that Stone is not only "wise and abundantly gifted," but that, in addition, her poetry is "stunning work" that spans a "superb range of evocative experience."

Perhaps it is this wide range...