next. This is the same technique used in "Words," each stanza could be a small
poem.
There is a stream of consciousness thinking the speaker in the poem goes through when
considering her inability to fall asleep the night before. For example: "By noon I
can’t stop writing. I’m on the back of last night, a reverse gallop."
Within the contents of this poem, the lines mean that the speaker in the poem is already
remembering and writing her thoughts of the night before. If the lines were standing alone
and a different subject came in the next stanza the meaning would change. There also is
the rhythm of two longer lines and one short. The last three lines are much like a haiku.
This poem demonstrates Stone’s deliberate use of form.
Not only does Stone point her poetic finger at men and their attitude and treatment of
women but she has also chosen aging and society’s treatment of the aged as the
subject of many poems. In "Interview with Theodore Roszak" (Carlson 1), Roszak
finds that people are amazed to realize that the story of longevity goes back to the
beginning of the industrial period, when the life expectancy in England’s industrial
Manchester was 17. Stone addresses the problem of longevity in her poetry, an issue that
is just now beginning to have some attention. If as Roszak states we are offering a long
healthy life, we need to consider useful enterprises for the increasing older population
(Carlson 3).
In "Relatives" (Ordinary Words 21) Stone is applauding the fact that
the women who have lived past their husbands have found something useful to do with their
lives.
Relatives
Grandma lives in this town;
in fact all over this town.
Grandpa’s dead.
Uncle Heery’s brain-dead,
and them aunts! Well!
It’s grandma you have to contend with.
She’s here? she’s there!
She works in the fast-food hangout.
She’s doing school lunches.
She’s the crossing guard at the school corner.
She’s the librarian’s assistant.
She’s part-time in the real-estate office.
She’s stuffing envelopes.
She gets up at three a.m.
to go to the screw factory;
and at night she’s at the business school
taking a course in computer science.
Now you take this next town.
Grandpa’s laid out neat in the cemetery
and grandma’s gone wild and bought a bus ticket
to Disneyland.
Uncle Bimbo’s been laid up for ten years
and them aunts
are all cashiers in ladies’ clothing
and grandma couldn’t stand the sight of them
washing their hands and their hair
and their panty hose.
"It’s Marine World for me," grandma says.
The first stanza of Relatives takes a look at the sociology of
aging in America. It begins with a litany of different ways older women find to survive
after their husbands have died. But her conclusion is wonderful because more and more,
older women are taking charge of their world and getting on with their lives. Often, it is
not until they are freed from the responsibilities of parenting that they are able to do
what they want with their lives. This is a fairly new sociological phenomena in the world.
In "The Changing Nature of Work", Mark Hunter says, "The number of people
55 and older who are still in the labor force has increased by 6 million since 1950; most
of that increase is women." Before the advent of antibiotics it was common for men to
have two or three wives. Many women died in childbirth as a result of the lack of medicine
and proper sanitary conditions. On a recent walk, I passed an old cemetery that showed
family after family with the wives laid out in a row, their head stones stating they had
died in childbirth. Besides the repetition in this poem, there is a sense of
"grandma" developing a new value system and choosing to do worthwhile activities
and frowns on the daughters "washing their hair and their pantyhose". (2)
It is often difficult to place a Stone poem in a specific category. In
"An Education in the Eighties" (Ordinary Words 17) she focuses on the
elderly but she also tells the history of other ages living outside of middle class
society.
An Education in the Eighties
I’m in the Grandparent’s Program
at the Happyvale School.
It ekes out the S.S.
This morning I pass a child,
elbows up like wings, his hands
in breast-high leather pockets. He’s
headed down the mountain, but not to school.
He don’t go to school. Up here on the mountain
them two women and seven children
share the same man.
He comes in from wherever,
conspicuous in that getup;
decides which beast to slaughter.
Always a gaggle of geese out on the highway.
On the back road,
all of a sudden he’ll show,
straddle a poorly fed horse.
Their big old ram, sweetbreads hanging like an extra leg,
goes blatting ahead of my Buick.
Their barn door hangs on one hinge.
Built seven years ago by an out-of-stater
who married a second time after his wife
ran off. Married one of the Jones
girls, the mean one who used to tie
the step-daughter to the end of the bed
where she would scream for hours.
He built that barn and house out of green wood,
and when it dried it buckled.
It buckled after he sold it for spite to them folks
in a fracas over his local taxes.
They serve a hot lunch at school
and we senior citizens get the same menu
as the fourth graders. It’s all measured out
just so, none left over. You take what’s flobbed
on the plate and stay in line
even if you wet your pants.
The speaker, an old woman, is using home-rooted language, making this a persona poem.
Stone starts again setting place,answering who, where, why and what and then slides into a
description of the folks in the neighborhood. This poem is similar to, "How They Got
Her to Quiet Down" (Ordinary Words 8) except that this poem isn’t talking
about what happens to one person in particular but how a whole group of people are
treated. In setting place, and putting the speaker right in the middle, Stone is leaving
the judgment and conclusions for the reader to make. The speaker is supplementing Social
Security with a hot meal at the school. As she moves about the neighborhood and back into
the cafeteria, the reader gets a sense of how much face is lost. She describes the
difficult lives the people in this town live, as well as speaking to how
"outside" society some of the people live. "He don’t go to school. Up
here on the mountain/ them two women and seven children/share the same man./ The home
rooted language works well in the poem. "You take what’s flobbed on the
plate." The history of the people in the poem draws a line showing that meanness is
carried down to the smallest. She brings the old and the young together with the real
fear; "even if you wet your pants" a common unspeakable problem for the young
and the elderly.
"Strands" (Ordinary Words 22is a poem that exemplifies
the wisdom Ruth Stone has developed over her years of writing. Much like a prayer, it also
speaks to the wisdom of aging.
Strands
This uprooted grass from the edge of the marsh-lake
is green and beginning to rot,
so that some strands are brown as Hillery’s hair,
and fine and bleached as Bianca’s hair.
A small snail is passenger at the tip of one strand.
But it does not seem to move.
It is fastened. A bird could use this grass.
As it lies over my left hand drying in the air,
at the finial point a protrusion of bud-knobs,
like flowers in small cylinders.
It is almost the skeleton of itself as it dries.
On my palm it could be the threads
for stitching something together.
These grasses, silent as ourselves
as we went about making ourselves
from our mothers’ bodies, as they grew
up through the shallows to the surface,
where I look down at my bird body.
The mother, the wind moving over the surface;
the mother holding the roots in the silty bottom.
Now the sister can begin to weave
the body of the shirts for the six swan brothers.
The brothers move over the lake,
looking down at their bird bodies.
This marsh grass could be like my mother’s fingers
in the garden. the green and brown stains of grass
on her fingers in the garden.
And this light grass on my hand
is like her hair, light and sweet smelling,
now as hay drying in the sun is sweet smelling.
The snail among the strands like myself, clinging.
Stone takes the reader on a walk and standing or sitting at the marsh-lake, begins to
describe the strands of grass. In the
process, using her senses and imagination, she describes what she feels and sees and then
names the things grass could be usedfor. She slides into what happens as it dries; a
skeleton of itself. She pushes it farther – - she could use it for stitching and farther,
"silent as we went about making ourselves from our mother’s body." She
notices that her own bird body pushes Mother (earth), holds the roots and then moves into
a fable of a sister weaving shirts for six swan brothers. Stone pushes the poem deeper and
deeper so that it could be her mother’s fingers in the garden, green and brown stains
circling back to the beginning "like her hair, light and sweet smelling," and
likens herself to the snail, clinging. "Strands" demonstrates the evolution of
Stone’s work.
Ruth Stone’s poetry speaks from her love and concern for human
kind. There are many reasons her poetry touches me. First, I appreciate her honesty, her
anger, and her humor. Second, I admire the musicality of her work and the fact that she
writes about the people in her life. Finally, Stone has been a model for me throughout my
writing career, because she has honed her craft throughout her entire life. By focusing on
the treatment of the elderly, men’s oppression of women and the lives of people that
live outside of middle class life, she demonstrates her awareness of problems and asks the
reader to consider them. She tells her story with the music of language picked up as a
child and developed as a poet. Like Alicia Ostriker, whose concern and anger is wide and
great, Stone is a poet of many subjects as well as one who continues to teach poetry.
Moreover, she is a poet who insists that we look at our world with all its beauty and all
its sins. Amazingly, she is a poet who at eighty-five continues to be constantly growing
in her writing, and she is a poet that has finally gained recognition for her excellent
work by receiving the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Works Cited
Battaglia, J.F.. "A Conversation with Ruth Stone", interview: Boulevard
Journal, Volume 12, Numbers 1 & 2, 1996. <http://www.poems.com/~poems
/stoneint. >
Barker, Wendy and Sandra Gilbert, eds. The House Is Made of Poetry, The Art of Ruth
Stone. Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996.
Barnstone, Willis. "Poet in the Mountains." The House Is Made of Poetry, The
Art of Ruth Stone. Eds. Wendy Barker and Sandra Gilbert. Carbondale and Edwardsville,
IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996. 78-100.
Bishop, Elizabeth. The Complete Poems 1927 – 1979. New York, The
Noonday Press, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983.
Bradley, Robert. "An Interview with Ruth Stone: 1990" The House Is Made of
Poetry, The Art of Ruth Stone. Eds. Wendy Barker and Sandra Gilbert. Carbondale and
Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996. 67-77.
Carlson, Elliot. "Interview with Theodore Roszak." AARP Bulletin. October
1999. <http://www.aarp.org/bulletin/oct99/roszal.html.
>
Clark, Kevin. " ‘The Wife’s Went Bazook’ Comedic Feminism in the
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University Press, 1996. 112-117.
Fiedler, Leslie. "On Ruth Stone." The House Is Made of Poetry, The Art of
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—, "Extraordinary words." Rev. of Ordinary Words by Ruth
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—, Interview. April, 2000
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—, Telephone Interview, Saturday, March 6, 2000.
—, Telephone Interview, Thursday, April 30, 2000.
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Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996. 101-105.
Copyright ? 2000 by Mary Ann Wehler