Research Catalog

Title

Ordinary words / Ruth Stone.

Author

Stone, Ruth.

Publication

Ashfield, Mass. : Paris Press, [1999], ©1999.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

74 pages; 24 cm

Summary

• "Ordinary Words celebrates Ruth Stone's 84th birthday. Ordinary Words captures a unique vision of "Americana" marked by Stone's characteristic wit, poignancy, and lyricism. The poet addresses the environment, poverty, and aging with fearless candor and surprising humor."--BOOK JACKET.
• "Stone's subjects are trailer parks, state parks, prefab houses, school crossing guards, bears, snakes, hummingbirds, bottled water, Aunt Maud, Uncle Cal, lost love, dry humping at the Greyhound bus terminal, and McDonald's as a refuge from loneliness. Her heroes are dead husbands, wild grandmothers, struggling daughters - ordinary Americans leading simple and extraordinary lives."--BOOK JACKET.

Contents

• Good Advice -- Up There -- Words -- This -- The Dark -- Summing It Up -- 1941 -- How They Got Her to Quiet Down -- So What -- Madison in the Mid-Sixties -- Repetition -- Perhaps -- Echoes and Shadows -- Earthquake -- Male Gorillas -- Never -- An Education in the Eighties -- Absence Proves Nothing -- So What's Wrong? -- Relatives -- Strands -- Can Cranes Cogitate? -- Aesthetics of the Cattle Farm -- Incredible Buys In -- Light Conclusions -- Uncle Cal on Fashions -- Yes, Think -- Hummingbirds -- The Ways of Daughters -- Then -- Ordinary Words -- When -- Patience -- One Thought -- Residue -- Sorting It Out -- The Trade-Off -- Romance -- Reading -- With Love -- So Be It -- In the Arboretum -- Overnight Guest -- All in Time -- Schmaltz -- The Trinity -- A Moment -- Ventriloquist -- This Space -- Unspeakable -- Vermont Nature -- Prefab -- I Meet Them -- At McDonald's in Rutland -- The Word Though as a Coupler -- Etc. --
• Sitcom on the Greyhound in Rutland, Vermont -- On the Street -- At the Museum, 1938 -- Speculation -- Bottled Water -- Western Purdah, Inc. -- Empathy Again -- Boom -- Moving Right Along -- A Little Chart -- Prayer of Descending Order.

ISBN

0963818392 (hardcover : alk. paper)

LCCN

99029931

OCLC

ocm41320093

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries