Ruth Stone has often been called "a poet's poet," though this has more to do with her relative obscurity than with any quality of her poetry. It has only been in the last few years that her work has gained the national attention it deserves. Born June 8, 1915, in Roanoke, Virginia, to musician Roger McDowell and poet and painter Ruth Ferguson Perkins, Stone was raised in Virginia and Indiana, where she spent long hours reading in her grandfather's library. Her parents nurtured her love for poetry. Her mother read her nursery rhymes and the poetry of Lord Alfred Tennyson, and her father read to her from the Bible. Stone received her formal education from the University of Illinois and Harvard University, from which she graduated with a bachelor of arts degree.

Although Stone began writing poems when she was six years old, she did not publish her...