Ruth Stone
(born 1920)

Ruth Stone (born 1920):
"Poems"
from In the Next Galaxy (2006)

On January 5, 2010 Kay Ryan gave her Stanford Poetry Workshop Calvino's Chapter 1 "Lightness" from Six Memos for the Next Millennium to read, she told us to bring in a poem that conveys lightness. I emailed a few friends for suggestions. On January 11, Denise emailed me Rilke's Orpheus II.14 and also a link to Elizabeth Gilbert's video (text) that told about Ruth Stone catching poems in the air. On January 12, Kay gave the class A.E. Housman's The Name and Nature of Poetry (pp. 32-51) to read. I found Housman's 1933 book based on the Leslie Stephen Lecture delivered at Cambridge (May 9, 1933) in the Stanford stacks (PN1111.H7). Next to this slim 50-page volume was Edward Hirsch's Poet's Choice (PN111.H57.2006). Near the end of this book (pp. 399-401), Hirsch says that Ruth Stone's "Poems" is one of his favorites from In the Next Galaxy. This poem tells how Ruth Stone gets inspired by the connection between poetry and birdsong. I'm including it in my anthology on "Lightness in Poetry" for there's an airy quality to this poem. (Peter Y. Chou)


POEMS

When you come back to me
it will be crow time
and flycatcher time,
with rising spirals of gnats
between the apple trees.
Every weed will be quadrupled,
coarse, welcoming
and spine-tipped.
The crows, their black flapping
bodies, their long calling
toward the mountain;
relatives, like mine,
ambivalent, eye-hooded;
hooting and tearing.
And you will take me in
to your fractal meaningless
babble; the quick of my mouth,
the madness of my tongue.

— Ruth Stone
     In the Next Galaxy (2002), p. 39


**************************************************

Edward Hirsch's commentary on Ruth Stone's "Poems" (pp. 400-401)

    Over the centuries, poets have often identified with cuckoos ("Sumer is icumen in— / Lhude sing, cuccu!") and mockingbirds, seagulls and herons, owls and nightingales ("Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!"). They have also noted their difference from us. They have watched them in their backyards (Anthony Hecht's "House Sparrows" nobly welcomes "these chipper stratoliners,/ Unsullen, unresentful, full of the grace/ Of cheerfulness"), followed them into the woods (Robert Burns, "Address to the Woodlark," Amy Clampitt, "A Whippoorwill in the Woods"), and tracked them down to the shore (May Swenson, "One of the Strangest," Galway Kinnell, "The Grey Heron"). They have treated them as messengers to and from the beyond, the very embodiment of a transcendent vocation.
    For example, in his definitive compendium, Shamanism, Mircea Eliade points out that "all over the world learning the language of animals, especially of birds, is equivalent to knowing the secrets of nature and hence to being able to prophesy." He presents evidence that the Pomo and the Menomini shamans imitate birds' songs, just as bird calls can be heard during seances among the Yakut, the Yukagir, the Chukchee, the Goldi, the Eskimo and others. To mimic the natural call of a bird, or, more strongly, to become a bird oneself, "indicates the capacity," Eliade notes, "to undertake the ecstatic journey to the sky and the beyond."
    It may be that a remnant of magical practice clings to a poet like Stone when she speaks of "crow time" and "flycatcher time," or when she mimics and even embodies "the fractal meaningless babble" of crow song. There is something irrational in poetry, which still trembles with a holy air. I've always liked that moment, for example, at the end of "To a Skylark" when Shelley calls upon the bird to teach him the ecstasy of its song. He seeks an energy that is both primitive and transcendental, the power of nature manifested through language. If he can learn birdsong, he declares, then he would sing with such "harmonious madness" that the awestruck world would pause and listen with the same rapt attention that he shows listening to the skylark's rapturous song.

Teach me half the gladness
    That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
    From my lips would flow
The world should listen then— as I am listening now.

**************************************************

Web Links to Ruth Stone

Modern American Poetry: Ruth Stone
    (Life & Career, On Stone's Poetry, Interviews, Online Poems)
Academy of American Poets: Ruth Stone
    (Biography, Poems, Further Reading, Interviews)
NPR: Poetry of Ruth Stone
    (The Imagined Galaxies of Ruth Stone on her 89th birthday)
Wikipedia: Ruth Stone
    (Professional & Personal Overviews, Bibliography, References, Links)
In the Dark
    (Diana Manister's book review of Ruth Stone's In the Dark)
A Moment with Ruth Stone
    ("What to Do" from What Love Comes To: New & Selected Poems)
Ruth Stone
    ("Lighter Than Air", "How It Is", "The Porch" from What Love Comes To)
Ruth Stone
    (Goodreads: Photo and short biography of Ruth Stone)
Ruth Stone feels the connect...
    (By Edward Hirsch, Washington Post, November 7, 2004)



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