SOURCE: Gelineau, Christine. “The Poetry of Ruth Stone: An Exercise against Loss.” Paintbrush: A Journal of Poetry and Translation 27 (2000/2001): 55-61.

In the following essay, Gelineau reads poems from Second-Hand Coat, Ordinary Words, and Simplicity to consider the “multiple and various,” “sly and direct,” “heart breaking and funny,” “unrestrained,” “unconventional” and “fresh” ways Stone's poetry addresses issues of loss.

Her triumph is her refusal to buckle. Born into the wartime years of the “War to End All Wars,” Ruth Stone has lived through the Depression, the Second World War, and the death by suicide of her beloved husband; lived through poverty, uncertainty, and loneliness. The world has little else to throw at her, and still she sings. Hers is not a refusal to see, to understand, but a refusal to give in to the forces of conformity and inhumanity, or, to the extent possible, to the ravages of time...