In the Dark

Rating:
Summary: fetching poems by 89 year old blind woman
Review: IN THE DARK by Ruth Stone. Copper Canyon Press, PO Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368; www.coppercanyonpress.org; [e-mail]. 110+x pp. $22.00 hardcover, ISBN 1-55659-210-8.
Ruth Stone is 89, and nearly totally blind. At this age and with this condition, memories make up the substance of her life. For her, memory is virtually a sensation; memory brings her into an intimacy with her surroundings and her past. Feelings and moods are not transient for her. Rather, they are entire universes of different aspects of the world and existence. The "sadness of things/speaks for you." (from "Interim") The flower beds and lawns of a small college--one where Stone likely taught at one time--intone the "quiet authority of culture." (from "Border") The title is somewhat ironic, for Stone illumines her subjects in an almost preternatural way.