Follows two West African poets and lifelong friends, Syl Cheney-Coker…
Ruth Stone's Vast Library of the Female Mind

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- Cataloging
- Transcript
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After tragedy strikes, acclaimed poet Ruth Stone retreated to the margins of the literary world, working tirelessly to provide for her children, and transforming her intense grief into poetry, using simple, startling language.
Using a conversational, intimate approach, award-winning Vermont filmmaker Nora Jacobson combines rare archival footage of Ruth at different times of her life, filmed in the 1970s by Hollywood film editor Sidney Wolinsky (The Sopranos, The Shape of Water), raw and original animation by Ruth’s granddaughter Bianca Stone, and heartfelt observations by family members and poets, including Pulitzer Prize winner Sharon Olds, Toi Derricotte, Major Jackson, Chard DeNiord and Edward Hirsch.
Beloved by many, Ruth’s home in Goshen, Vermont became a mecca for her students, as well as poet friends and family members. There she inspired people to make art and write, not only through activities such as the “poetry game”, but by providing solace and nurture, surrounded by nature and camaraderie. After Ruth died, her grandchildren and Ben Pease began renovating the house and turning it into a writer’s retreat. Their goal is to create an enduring legacy that will keep Ruth’s name alive and nurture a new generation of poets. The film follows the renovation of Ruth’s home, culminating in a poetry workshop, the first of many.
Though not well known outside of the poetry world, Stone won accolades and awards, such as the National Book Award for Poetry, the Wallace Stevens Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Delmore Schwartz Award, and she was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, among many others. This film hopes to acquaint more people, of all ages and gender, with Ruth Stone’s poetry and the poignant tragedy at the heart of her oeuvre.
“Jacobson does a beautiful job of connecting different moments of Ruth’s recitations into one continuous flow, aging her forward and backwards, all within the same timeless poems....an utter joy to behold....” —Isabella Bonvini, New Jersey Stage
“An intimate and revealing portrait of an earthy, elegant woman... Jacobson captures beautiful moments with the nonagenarian Stone...” —Travis Weedon, The Montpelier Bridge
“Lovely... a terrific film...” —Ken Eisen, Shadow Distribution
“It is like discovering a lost treasure. I feel cheated at the thought that I never knew of her or her work before your film. It's also because you crafted a story about grief and love that breaks one's heart and reconstructs it into something bigger, rather than smaller. So inspirational. The layers go on and on.... It is everything a good documentary should be.” —Laura Schenck, Maine PBS
“A film twelve years in the making, the doc is a concise and deep dive into the writing and personal life of the 2007 Vermont Poet Laureate. From poets Sharon Olds, Major Jackson, and Chard deNiord to her massive family, the film weaves these interviews with gorgeously rendered visual storytelling from granddaughter and noted poet and artist, Bianca Stone, along with forty years of archival footage of the cavalcade of family and now-famous artists and writers who visited her Goshen home—a central character throughout the film... But the highlight has to be Stone herself. Her musings and memories. The recitation and free-versing. Her mind whirling, live-editing, rhapsodizing, creating genius right before us, and like any brilliant star, accessing and accepting the chaotic wonder of the world.” —Dayton Shafer, Film Critic, Vermont College of Fine Arts
Citation
Main credits
Jacobson, Nora (film director)
Stone, Ruth (on-screen participant)
Distributor subjects
Women's Studies; Literature; Cultural Anthropology; American Studies; PoetryKeywords
WEBVTT
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[gentle music]
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there\'s this moment of anticipation before I come around
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the curve to see if the house is still there.
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And there\'s always that same amazing feeling.
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I feel like this place waits for me to take me in again.
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And when I leave, I say goodbye to it,
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and I say goodbye to the books.
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You know, \"I\'m going now, goodbye, be back.\"[chuckls]
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I\'m Guy Raz.
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that poet Ruth Stone has died at the age of 96.
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Stone died at home in Vermont with her family by her side
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on November 19.
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She was buried behind the farmhouse where she wrote
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so many of her poems.
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Buried in an orchard where long ago
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she would pick raspberries.
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to recite.
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Do you remember what it was called?
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All I want to do is try
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if it wasn\'t easy I let it lie.
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Learning through my pores instead.
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And it did neither of us any good!
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[all laughing]
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For now she is gone who slept away my life.
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And I am ignorant who inherited.
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Though the head has grown so lively
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But she who had my eyes, closed them in happiness,
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and wrapped the dark in her arms and stole my life away,
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Singing in dreams of what was sure to come.
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I see it perfectly, except the beast-
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Everything shimmers and glitters and shakes
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with unbearable longing.
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The dancers who cannot sleep
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[crickets sing]
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[wind chimes ring]
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[bird twitters]
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[wind crackling]
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I love her poems and went up to Vermont
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and shot a documentary.
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It\'s all here, basically, these cans.
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Truthfully, I didn\'t know much about what I was doing
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at the time, but I did my best and came up
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with what I came up with.
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[high pitched tone]
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But among other things.
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I had a love affair which I don\'t think
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that I could duplicate.
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and that probably nothing affects my art.
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Except me.
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iconic hair-do.
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So a lot of the pictures have this,
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what is that called when it bunches in the front like that?
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Like a swoop, it\'s pinned, it probably has a name.
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I guess it was \'40s style.
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And she just had the same hairstyle for her entire life.
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[clock ticks]
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What did I say I was going to read you?
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Oh, yeah, right.
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Oh, I got some swell new poems here.
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I ought to read you my new ones.
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I had an Eclair, I think, and a Nagra.
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And I had to bring all these cans of raw film,
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and changing bags, and the whole megillah.
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I shall grow until I encompass you.
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There in your box, barefoot in your best suit.
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and what poems were about and how she thought them up
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and what they meant.
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That was very exciting.
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What are you working on, Ruth?
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going through her mind.
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And whenever she had a dull moment when people would,
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now turn their phone on or something, she would
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start scribbling.
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in the way that goldfinches do when they\'re disturbed,
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a flock of them.
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And you know, they will rush up.
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And of course, they rush up glittering, you know?
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Oh, glitter!
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Maybe, no, but that\'s not really it.
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She would be staying here,
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she stayed in my son\'s room one time, he was away at school.
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And she would just sit at that,
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what used to be his high school desk, writing poems.
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And then she wrote a poem about sitting
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at his high school desk writing poems.
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if they\'re disturbed...
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that\'s very ancient in poetry,
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which has to do with the idea of the muse, or inspiration,
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or in breathing, where you can locate that inspiration
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either outside of you from the wind that\'s blowing past you,
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or from the irrational that comes up inside of you.
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and put her on a bus to the next place
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that she was going to go,
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and I would see her sit back on the bus.
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And she would be in another world.
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And you know that the Muse was somehow inhabiting her
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in this extraordinary way.
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But every doom, like a hazelnut comes down to its own worm.
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So I\'m rocking here like any granny
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with her apron over her head saying, lordy me,
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It\'s my trouble.
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There\'s nothing to be learned this way.
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If I heard a girl crying help, I would go to save her;
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but you hardly ever hear these words.
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Dear children, you must try to say something
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when you are in need.
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Don\'t confuse hunger with greed;
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And don\'t wait until you are dead.\"
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there is a flow as in Dickinson,
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yet always the unexpected word.
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And Ruth\'s poetry is like that.
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California, Illinois, Wisconsin, Virginia,
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to teach and always come back here.
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appeared there and stayed there for 100 years.
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What Ruth used to call
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\"The Vast Library of the Female Mind.\"
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She was like a, a squirrel gathering nuts
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and she would put all this stuff together.
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And it would work.
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writers-
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Let\'s hear it.
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and dress by yellow candlelight.
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We were encouraged to do all sorts of different things.
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We could paint, we could take pictures,
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we could write stories, we could write poems, we could sing,
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we could play any instrument, and none of it had,
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there wasn\'t an end in anyone\'s mind,
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I think, in terms of what we should become,
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listening to poetry, hearing poetry,
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hearing the sound of words, going to readings.
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Every time my mother wrote a poem, she read it to us.
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But she never made me feel, ever or my sister Abigail,
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who also writes and is a wonderful writer,
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she never made us feel like it wasn\'t open to us too.
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♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
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♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
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♪ Happy birthday dear Ruth Grandma ♪
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♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
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♪ And many more ♪
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[all cheering]
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♪ But it\'s a long, long while ♪
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♪ From May to December ♪
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♪ And the days grow short ♪
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sat out here in these wicker chairs
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and she loved wind chimes.
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So whenever I hear wind chimes I think of Goshen.
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And then under the porch lived this incredible,
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feral mother cat, who year after year would survive!
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She was like this weird parallel to grandma.
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I answered an ad in the New York Times.
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I came up over the hill,
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and I saw this house and I said, \"I\'ll take it.\"
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It had an orchard and a brook, and everything I wanted.
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Walter didn\'t speak to me for a month, because I did that.
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He didn\'t want it!
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for gosh sakes.
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So he was, really disturbed that she bought it,
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but, it was the best thing that ever happened.
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And then they\'d go up there and they had fun.
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And he tarred the roof and wrote a lot of poems
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and we\'d sleep on the back porch.
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It was wonderful.
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♪ I have three daughters, like greengage plums ♪
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♪ They sat all day, sucking their thumbs ♪
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♪ And more\'s the pity ♪
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♪ They cried all day ♪
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♪ Why doesn\'t our mother\'s brown hair turn gray ♪
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I didn\'t write it down, I didn\'t do anything.
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I always made up all songs that I sang
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for the kids at night.
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I didn\'t think about them,
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I just sang them and they came out that way.
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♪ And Daddy won\'t you let us marry ♪
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♪ Singing sprinkle snow down on Mama\'s hair ♪
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♪ And Lordy give us our share ♪
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Mother\'s students would come up.
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Huge groups of people would spend the summer,
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and they were always writers.
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And every evening we would have a get together
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you know, spaghetti dinners and wine and heaven.
246
00:12:35.490 --> 00:12:38.461
Absolute heaven all through my childhood.
247
00:12:38.461 --> 00:12:41.320
[buoyant dinner conversation]
248
00:12:41.320 --> 00:12:46.320 line:15%
249
00:12:46.350 --> 00:12:50.020
the passion, the spontaneousness of that
250
00:12:50.020 --> 00:12:54.520
was very new to me when I was 15, 16, 17, 18.
251
00:12:56.520 --> 00:12:59.680
This was a different kind of tribe.
252
00:12:59.680 --> 00:13:04.680 line:15%
253
00:13:05.100 --> 00:13:06.063
by everyone.
254
00:13:09.450 --> 00:13:14.450
255
00:13:16.226 --> 00:13:17.059
256
00:13:17.059 --> 00:13:18.930
257
00:13:18.930 --> 00:13:19.900
That\'s a fun game.
258
00:13:19.900 --> 00:13:21.350
Everyone puts in a word
259
00:13:21.350 --> 00:13:23.270
and then you have to use it in the poem.
260
00:13:23.270 --> 00:13:25.030
261
00:13:25.030 --> 00:13:26.160
Give me a word.
262
00:13:26.160 --> 00:13:27.428
Give me a word.
263
00:13:27.428 --> 00:13:29.630
264
00:13:29.630 --> 00:13:31.510
and I ended up marrying him.
265
00:13:31.510 --> 00:13:33.340 line:15%
266
00:13:33.340 --> 00:13:37.505 line:15%
it wasn\'t like a professor or student relationship.
267
00:13:37.505 --> 00:13:38.490
268
00:13:38.490 --> 00:13:40.597
269
00:13:40.597 --> 00:13:41.783
270
00:13:41.783 --> 00:13:46.750
271
00:13:46.750 --> 00:13:49.073
272
00:13:49.073 --> 00:13:50.280
[chortling laughs]
273
00:13:50.280 --> 00:13:51.580
Nor mood to debate.
274
00:13:51.580 --> 00:13:54.755 line:15%
275
00:13:54.755 --> 00:13:57.560 line:15%
And amazing poems would come out of this.
276
00:13:57.560 --> 00:13:59.083
277
00:13:59.083 --> 00:14:02.860
278
00:14:02.860 --> 00:14:06.470
\'cause she was things were always a little wild
279
00:14:06.470 --> 00:14:08.073
and hectic in her life.
280
00:14:09.106 --> 00:14:13.130
[students giggling]
281
00:14:13.130 --> 00:14:17.890
282
00:14:17.890 --> 00:14:20.810
and I heard it coming up the mountain and it just got closer
283
00:14:20.810 --> 00:14:24.415
and closer and closer and then it just burst over us.
284
00:14:24.415 --> 00:14:25.391
[thunder rumbles]
285
00:14:25.391 --> 00:14:26.950
Think what it must be like to hear
286
00:14:26.950 --> 00:14:29.600
the water of a broken dam coming toward you.
287
00:14:29.600 --> 00:14:31.434
Terrifying, terrifying.
288
00:14:31.434 --> 00:14:32.800
[rolling thunder]
289
00:14:32.800 --> 00:14:36.390
290
00:14:36.390 --> 00:14:40.220 line:15%
her husband killing himself, like that shock.
291
00:14:40.220 --> 00:14:43.350 line:15%
She then thereafter always had awareness
292
00:14:43.350 --> 00:14:48.283
that catastrophe strikes at random when you don\'t expect it.
293
00:14:49.267 --> 00:14:53.150
[low reverberations]
294
00:14:53.150 --> 00:14:58.150
♪ And these few precious days ♪
295
00:14:59.493 --> 00:15:02.660
♪ I\'ll spend with you ♪
296
00:15:04.271 --> 00:15:06.771
[birds chirp]
297
00:15:11.620 --> 00:15:15.140
298
00:15:15.140 --> 00:15:18.880 line:15%
and without any preparation, the death of her husband.
299
00:15:18.880 --> 00:15:22.520 line:15%
And there she is across the ocean in England.
300
00:15:22.520 --> 00:15:24.700 line:15%
301
00:15:24.700 --> 00:15:27.170
during Walter\'s sabbatical from Vassar.
302
00:15:27.170 --> 00:15:32.170 line:15%
303
00:15:32.830 --> 00:15:36.540
with a lot of good people having the time of their life.
304
00:15:36.540 --> 00:15:39.470
305
00:15:39.470 --> 00:15:41.783 line:15%
And it was waiting for us in England.
306
00:15:41.783 --> 00:15:42.616 line:15%
307
00:15:42.616 --> 00:15:46.850
a little white car and we drove everywhere in it.
308
00:15:46.850 --> 00:15:50.250
And we\'d be in the backseat, fighting and caterwauling
309
00:15:50.250 --> 00:15:52.810
and having fun looking out the window.
310
00:15:52.810 --> 00:15:55.072
And mom and dad were in the front seat.
311
00:15:55.072 --> 00:15:55.905
312
00:15:55.905 --> 00:15:57.900
313
00:15:57.900 --> 00:16:02.790
but Walter had an office in London, and died, in London.
314
00:16:02.790 --> 00:16:04.760
He hung himself.
315
00:16:04.760 --> 00:16:09.058 line:15%
316
00:16:09.058 --> 00:16:14.058 line:15%
no one ever told me that that could happen.
317
00:16:14.140 --> 00:16:16.900
Mom was blown out of the water.
318
00:16:16.900 --> 00:16:18.670
It was unimaginable.
319
00:16:18.670 --> 00:16:22.580
320
00:16:22.580 --> 00:16:25.290 line:15%
You can think of cheap ways of talking about it.
321
00:16:25.290 --> 00:16:28.160 line:15%
Fear of possible success,
322
00:16:28.160 --> 00:16:30.690 line:15%
which is harder to bear than fear of failure,
323
00:16:30.690 --> 00:16:32.100 line:15%
which you\'re used to.
324
00:16:32.100 --> 00:16:33.640
325
00:16:33.640 --> 00:16:36.420
And I was there when he got his first poem published
326
00:16:36.420 --> 00:16:38.960
in the New Yorker, when the letter came in the mailbox.
327
00:16:38.960 --> 00:16:40.630 line:15%
We were in Goshen for the summer.
328
00:16:40.630 --> 00:16:42.731
And we, I was with him,
329
00:16:42.731 --> 00:16:44.910 line:15%
even with him as he went to the mailbox
330
00:16:44.910 --> 00:16:48.220 line:15%
and he opened the mailbox and it was a letter of acceptance,
331
00:16:48.220 --> 00:16:50.390 line:15%
his first acceptance.
332
00:16:50.390 --> 00:16:51.890
And he cried.
333
00:16:51.890 --> 00:16:56.230
And he said that he told me, and I was ten at the time,
334
00:16:56.230 --> 00:16:59.760
he said, \"Thank God,\" he said, \"I was gonna kill myself
335
00:16:59.760 --> 00:17:02.517
if I didn\'t get published by age 40.\"
336
00:17:03.760 --> 00:17:07.503 line:15%
337
00:17:09.660 --> 00:17:12.523 line:15%
As far as I know, the only book that he published,
338
00:17:14.407 --> 00:17:16.830
\"Rains wet his manuscript.
339
00:17:16.830 --> 00:17:19.340
The notes fell from the staves.
340
00:17:19.340 --> 00:17:21.470
The letters ran like waters.
341
00:17:21.470 --> 00:17:22.960 line:15%
Paternal music dripped.
342
00:17:22.960 --> 00:17:25.770 line:15%
My grass fell into graves.
343
00:17:25.770 --> 00:17:28.120 line:15%
I shall descend in daughters.\"
344
00:17:28.120 --> 00:17:29.350
345
00:17:29.350 --> 00:17:32.730
He had three daughters, and he wanted a son,
346
00:17:32.730 --> 00:17:34.477
and he kept getting daughters.
347
00:17:34.477 --> 00:17:38.510
348
00:17:38.510 --> 00:17:40.520
in harems of winding hair
349
00:17:40.520 --> 00:17:42.830
who clothe them in my dollars,
350
00:17:42.830 --> 00:17:45.610
and lay me there, man brimming
351
00:17:45.610 --> 00:17:47.380
amidst their golden stare.\"
352
00:17:47.380 --> 00:17:49.103
353
00:17:50.619 --> 00:17:52.020
I don\'t know, he then killed himself
354
00:17:52.020 --> 00:17:55.370
and we don\'t know whether it\'s because he was under pressure
355
00:17:55.370 --> 00:17:59.930
to produce a novel that he wasn\'t able to do,
356
00:17:59.930 --> 00:18:03.600
or if the fame sort of died in his hands because
357
00:18:03.600 --> 00:18:06.340
it wasn\'t what he had hoped it to be.
358
00:18:06.340 --> 00:18:10.000
Or if there were other issues from his childhood
359
00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:12.810
that my mom and all of us weren\'t aware of.
360
00:18:12.810 --> 00:18:14.190
We\'ll never know that.
361
00:18:14.190 --> 00:18:16.880
362
00:18:16.880 --> 00:18:19.770 line:15%
And so I think he was already fascinated
363
00:18:19.770 --> 00:18:24.620 line:15%
in the stages of existence, life, death, heaven and hell.
364
00:18:24.620 --> 00:18:28.770
And that\'s why I wonder about my grandmother
365
00:18:30.550 --> 00:18:33.570
not being so shocked to get that phone call.
366
00:18:33.570 --> 00:18:35.690
367
00:18:35.690 --> 00:18:39.350
you had hung yourself on the door of a rented room,
368
00:18:39.350 --> 00:18:43.090
like an overcoat, like a bathrobe hung from a hook.
369
00:18:43.090 --> 00:18:44.900
When they forced the door open,
370
00:18:44.900 --> 00:18:47.640
your feet pushed against the floor.
371
00:18:47.640 --> 00:18:51.030
Inside your skull, there was no room for us
372
00:18:51.030 --> 00:18:54.090
I think, during a certain period after Walter died,
373
00:18:54.090 --> 00:18:55.990
because he did commit suicide,
374
00:18:55.990 --> 00:18:58.050
I had a tremendous fear of being truthful
375
00:18:58.050 --> 00:19:01.770
with myself or honest, I was afraid that I had killed him.
376
00:19:01.770 --> 00:19:04.130
377
00:19:04.130 --> 00:19:07.040
sitting in front of that fireplace in Goshen
378
00:19:07.040 --> 00:19:10.450
talking about why, why, why, why did he do it?
379
00:19:10.450 --> 00:19:15.450
380
00:19:17.600 --> 00:19:21.330 line:15%
I mean, my husband died of pancreatic cancer.
381
00:19:21.330 --> 00:19:24.430 line:15%
And he\'s so so so did not wanna die.
382
00:19:24.430 --> 00:19:27.640 line:15%
383
00:19:27.640 --> 00:19:29.230
384
00:19:29.230 --> 00:19:30.690
I can\'t remember if it was my mom,
385
00:19:30.690 --> 00:19:34.540
that he had very wild eyes before he died.
386
00:19:34.540 --> 00:19:36.470
That always stayed with me.
387
00:19:36.470 --> 00:19:39.720 line:15%
388
00:19:39.720 --> 00:19:41.780 line:15%
It\'s an act of violence.
389
00:19:41.780 --> 00:19:45.000
But on the other hand, we all have a limit
390
00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:50.000
to what we can endure, and as you get older and more mature,
391
00:19:50.670 --> 00:19:55.670
you become more empathetic towards
392
00:19:55.760 --> 00:19:57.710
the bad decisions other people make.
393
00:19:57.710 --> 00:20:00.210
394
00:20:00.210 --> 00:20:02.429
you\'re wrong, it\'s a rejection of his own life, not mine.
395
00:20:02.429 --> 00:20:04.192
396
00:20:04.192 --> 00:20:07.582
397
00:20:07.582 --> 00:20:08.481
398
00:20:08.481 --> 00:20:10.613
399
00:20:10.613 --> 00:20:13.355
By the time he got around to doing that he\'d forgotten me.
400
00:20:13.355 --> 00:20:14.268
401
00:20:14.268 --> 00:20:15.443
402
00:20:15.443 --> 00:20:16.681
403
00:20:16.681 --> 00:20:17.580
not to be with you.
404
00:20:17.580 --> 00:20:19.720
405
00:20:19.720 --> 00:20:21.910 line:15%
406
00:20:21.910 --> 00:20:25.090 line:15%
she was free not to talk about it,
407
00:20:25.090 --> 00:20:26.893 line:15%
but she was very open about it.
408
00:20:28.380 --> 00:20:30.080
409
00:20:31.190 --> 00:20:33.070
He didn\'t not love me.
410
00:20:33.070 --> 00:20:33.910
411
00:20:33.910 --> 00:20:36.240
412
00:20:36.240 --> 00:20:40.650
So I can\'t imagine Ruth didn\'t know more about
413
00:20:40.650 --> 00:20:41.853
why that happened.
414
00:20:44.760 --> 00:20:46.570
415
00:20:46.570 --> 00:20:48.743
We met at the University of Illinois.
416
00:20:49.630 --> 00:20:51.083
And I was married to John.
417
00:20:51.960 --> 00:20:56.930
And John had traumatized me and I had fallen bang,
418
00:20:56.930 --> 00:20:58.980
out of love with him.
419
00:20:58.980 --> 00:21:01.630
You know how it is when you\'re young, your love dies.
420
00:21:02.613 --> 00:21:04.113
And I didn\'t love him anymore.
421
00:21:05.190 --> 00:21:06.280
But that was alright.
422
00:21:06.280 --> 00:21:09.380
I just numbly went on living with him,
423
00:21:09.380 --> 00:21:12.370
and I met Walter kind of accidentally
424
00:21:12.370 --> 00:21:14.040
through some friends or something.
425
00:21:14.040 --> 00:21:17.950
And he looked over at me and he said he fell in love.
426
00:21:17.950 --> 00:21:19.050
You know how kids are.
427
00:21:19.050 --> 00:21:22.955
It was just electrifying, I don\'t know what is it?
428
00:21:22.955 --> 00:21:24.500
[Ruth laughing]
429
00:21:24.500 --> 00:21:27.290
430
00:21:27.290 --> 00:21:30.470 line:15%
He had a pock-marked face and ears that stuck out.
431
00:21:30.470 --> 00:21:31.303 line:15%
He wasn\'t classically-
432
00:21:31.303 --> 00:21:32.968 line:15%
433
00:21:32.968 --> 00:21:35.460 line:15%
434
00:21:35.460 --> 00:21:36.750
I mean, I thought he was much more attractive-
435
00:21:36.750 --> 00:21:38.610
436
00:21:38.610 --> 00:21:40.350
437
00:21:40.350 --> 00:21:41.550
438
00:21:41.550 --> 00:21:42.728 line:15%
439
00:21:42.728 --> 00:21:43.670
[all chortling]
440
00:21:43.670 --> 00:21:45.080
441
00:21:45.080 --> 00:21:46.014
442
00:21:46.014 --> 00:21:49.690
443
00:21:49.690 --> 00:21:51.593
He dragged me off and hit me.
444
00:21:53.330 --> 00:21:58.330
He hit me so hard that it cut my lip.
445
00:21:59.060 --> 00:22:04.060
But eventually, I did get away from John and married Walter.
446
00:22:06.780 --> 00:22:09.020
447
00:22:09.020 --> 00:22:12.930
with no husband and no income and three daughters.
448
00:22:12.930 --> 00:22:16.120
449
00:22:16.120 --> 00:22:18.690
And it was all very surreal.
450
00:22:18.690 --> 00:22:21.700 line:15%
My youngest sister Abigail didn\'t know my dad had died.
451
00:22:21.700 --> 00:22:23.280 line:15%
She was five.
452
00:22:23.280 --> 00:22:25.670
And I think that was a mistake,
453
00:22:25.670 --> 00:22:27.840
not to have included her in that.
454
00:22:27.840 --> 00:22:31.360 line:15%
455
00:22:31.360 --> 00:22:32.550 line:15%
It was really confusing,
456
00:22:32.550 --> 00:22:35.520 line:15%
and one of the hardest things was that
457
00:22:35.520 --> 00:22:37.320 line:15%
everyone was together in this grief
458
00:22:37.320 --> 00:22:41.960
and comforting each other, without her.
459
00:22:41.960 --> 00:22:44.690
460
00:22:44.690 --> 00:22:46.200
at My Weekly Reader.
461
00:22:46.200 --> 00:22:49.420
So it was a combination of everything was okay,
462
00:22:49.420 --> 00:22:53.910
and everything was not \'cause she also cried a lot.
463
00:22:53.910 --> 00:22:55.570
And if it hit her, that grief,
464
00:22:55.570 --> 00:22:57.910
would tell the grocery store people,
465
00:22:57.910 --> 00:23:00.614
anybody who was around, and they would be devastated
466
00:23:00.614 --> 00:23:02.200
and she would be devastated.
467
00:23:02.200 --> 00:23:04.993
It was like she couldn\'t not,
468
00:23:06.180 --> 00:23:08.810
well, she couldn\'t hold it in when it was coming out.
469
00:23:08.810 --> 00:23:09.920
So to speak.
470
00:23:09.920 --> 00:23:14.920
471
00:23:16.920 --> 00:23:21.053
472
00:23:22.060 --> 00:23:23.690
473
00:23:23.690 --> 00:23:25.250
My daughters [crying and laughing]
474
00:23:25.250 --> 00:23:28.303
think the most amazing things about me.
475
00:23:30.020 --> 00:23:31.463
They love their Mama.
476
00:23:32.770 --> 00:23:35.070
477
00:23:35.070 --> 00:23:36.860
478
00:23:36.860 --> 00:23:37.887
479
00:23:37.887 --> 00:23:41.620
480
00:23:41.620 --> 00:23:42.993
481
00:23:43.940 --> 00:23:45.690
482
00:23:45.690 --> 00:23:46.523
483
00:23:46.523 --> 00:23:48.810
484
00:23:48.810 --> 00:23:50.630
She worried a lot.
485
00:23:50.630 --> 00:23:52.703
486
00:23:52.703 --> 00:23:55.003
487
00:23:56.160 --> 00:23:58.107
I couldn\'t go through it again.
488
00:23:58.107 --> 00:24:02.205 line:15%
489
00:24:02.205 --> 00:24:03.460 line:15%
\'Look how little I am;
490
00:24:03.460 --> 00:24:05.970 line:15%
And I\'m the only boy in the family.
491
00:24:05.970 --> 00:24:10.107 line:15%
I hardly ever see a boy,\' he says, warming to his subject.\"
492
00:24:11.910 --> 00:24:13.580
A lot of women in my family.
493
00:24:13.580 --> 00:24:17.870 line:15%
So I can certainly see myself saying that.
494
00:24:17.870 --> 00:24:19.810 line:15%
And a lot of women coming to the property here,
495
00:24:19.810 --> 00:24:21.740 line:15%
a lot of friends of Ruth\'s.
496
00:24:21.740 --> 00:24:24.670
497
00:24:24.670 --> 00:24:29.528
was very much like a part of our whole family dynamic.
498
00:24:29.528 --> 00:24:32.650 line:15%
it was sort of our own myth that we lived in
499
00:24:32.650 --> 00:24:33.880 line:15%
and still live in.
500
00:24:33.880 --> 00:24:36.820
501
00:24:36.820 --> 00:24:39.950
by his tie, so it can make your mind go
502
00:24:42.000 --> 00:24:47.000
a dark place that you kind of associate with suicide.
503
00:24:48.360 --> 00:24:53.360 line:15%
504
00:24:54.090 --> 00:24:59.090
could happen just, in a split second, and take my life down.
505
00:24:59.850 --> 00:25:01.733
506
00:25:01.733 --> 00:25:06.440
that doesn\'t have some sort of tragic inheritance
507
00:25:06.440 --> 00:25:09.490
that they pass on to their children to carry.
508
00:25:09.490 --> 00:25:12.540
509
00:25:12.540 --> 00:25:15.480
to be a writer, that I didn\'t wanna open myself
510
00:25:15.480 --> 00:25:19.530
up in that way, that I wasn\'t at all willing.
511
00:25:19.530 --> 00:25:21.240
And so I didn\'t do it anymore
512
00:25:21.240 --> 00:25:25.010
because you do have to be willing to be open
513
00:25:25.010 --> 00:25:26.770
in a way that I wasn\'t.
514
00:25:26.770 --> 00:25:29.773
515
00:25:30.859 --> 00:25:31.774
516
00:25:31.774 --> 00:25:33.074
517
00:25:35.123 --> 00:25:35.956
518
00:25:37.410 --> 00:25:39.890
It\'s weird to feel like you sort of inherited
519
00:25:39.890 --> 00:25:43.723
somebody else\'s grief, the sort of endlessness of it.
520
00:25:44.570 --> 00:25:47.540
But what I\'ve learned with animation so far
521
00:25:47.540 --> 00:25:50.030
is that you can\'t be impatient.
522
00:25:50.030 --> 00:25:55.030
And the cool thing too is that each attempt that I do,
523
00:25:56.520 --> 00:25:58.423
it sort of leads to another thing.
524
00:25:59.620 --> 00:26:02.900
So I\'ve been playing off grandma\'s amazing elegy poems
525
00:26:02.900 --> 00:26:07.900
and poems about mortality and the body after it\'s dead.
526
00:26:08.030 --> 00:26:10.890
And a lot of people don\'t want to look at that.
527
00:26:10.890 --> 00:26:14.010
And she did in her grieving,
528
00:26:14.010 --> 00:26:16.410
529
00:26:16.410 --> 00:26:20.290
We are balanced like dancers in memory.
530
00:26:20.290 --> 00:26:24.043 line:15%
I feel your coat, I smell your tobacco.
531
00:26:24.890 --> 00:26:26.623
You almost touch me.
532
00:26:28.730 --> 00:26:32.500 line:15%
533
00:26:32.500 --> 00:26:37.010 line:15%
of constant mourning is owed to, I think,
534
00:26:37.010 --> 00:26:40.873
being haunted by one\'s material.
535
00:26:52.500 --> 00:26:56.783
536
00:26:58.400 --> 00:27:00.730 line:15%
And of course, became grandma\'s, too.
537
00:27:00.730 --> 00:27:03.290
And it\'s one of those rooms where a lot of things stayed
538
00:27:03.290 --> 00:27:06.150
where they\'d been put for many years.
539
00:27:06.150 --> 00:27:11.150
Just the papers the poems, the letters,
540
00:27:14.290 --> 00:27:18.350
like here\'s a letter to my grandfather in 1955.
541
00:27:18.350 --> 00:27:20.650 line:15%
542
00:27:20.650 --> 00:27:23.670
and they\'d been writing hundreds of letters to each other.
543
00:27:23.670 --> 00:27:27.110
But after Walter died, Ruth didn\'t write for a while.
544
00:27:27.110 --> 00:27:29.297
545
00:27:29.297 --> 00:27:32.363
I just remember saying to myself, the bird has died.
546
00:27:33.970 --> 00:27:37.750
And I meant the bird in myself had died, the singer.
547
00:27:37.750 --> 00:27:40.170
But all of a sudden I woke up and I realized,
548
00:27:40.170 --> 00:27:44.491
oh, my God how dull everything looked.
549
00:27:44.491 --> 00:27:46.880
How dull the world was.
550
00:27:46.880 --> 00:27:48.600
How awful!
551
00:27:48.600 --> 00:27:50.380
552
00:27:50.380 --> 00:27:53.690
kind of free verse manner, as if to say
553
00:27:53.690 --> 00:27:57.340
she just needed to talk very plainly about her grief
554
00:27:57.340 --> 00:28:00.540
and what she was feeling, and found her style.
555
00:28:00.540 --> 00:28:02.840
556
00:28:02.840 --> 00:28:06.480 line:15%
You and I, the whole summer seemed like a cable-car ride
557
00:28:06.480 --> 00:28:08.250 line:15%
over the gold bay.
558
00:28:08.250 --> 00:28:11.390 line:15%
But once in a bistro, angry at one another,
559
00:28:11.390 --> 00:28:13.640 line:15%
We quarreled about a taxi fare.
560
00:28:13.640 --> 00:28:16.320
I doubt that it was the fare we quarreled about
561
00:28:16.320 --> 00:28:18.430
But one excuse is as good as another
562
00:28:18.430 --> 00:28:22.770
in the excess of passion, in the need to be worn away.
563
00:28:22.770 --> 00:28:25.250
Do they know it is cleanness of skin
564
00:28:25.250 --> 00:28:27.850
firmness of flesh that matters.
565
00:28:27.850 --> 00:28:30.110
It is so difficult to look at the deprived,
566
00:28:30.110 --> 00:28:31.533
or smell their decay.
567
00:28:32.450 --> 00:28:36.100
But now I\'m among them, I, too, am a leper, a warning
568
00:28:36.100 --> 00:28:38.850
569
00:28:38.850 --> 00:28:42.770 line:15%
and the horror of returning to that over and over again
570
00:28:42.770 --> 00:28:45.360 line:15%
in her mind, was something that made her
571
00:28:45.360 --> 00:28:47.620 line:15%
particularly extraordinary as a poet.
572
00:28:47.620 --> 00:28:52.620 line:15%
573
00:28:52.730 --> 00:28:57.540 line:15%
his death inspired her first great book of poems.
574
00:28:57.540 --> 00:29:01.423
It pushed her on as negative things often do.
575
00:29:02.300 --> 00:29:04.530 line:15%
576
00:29:04.530 --> 00:29:06.963 line:15%
This is the second book of hers, I published.
577
00:29:09.650 --> 00:29:14.603 line:15%
578
00:29:17.410 --> 00:29:19.313
I think what I lived in before was,
579
00:29:20.920 --> 00:29:22.830
some sort of dream.
580
00:29:22.830 --> 00:29:24.620
Yes, as if I was asleep.
581
00:29:24.620 --> 00:29:29.210
And then after Walter died, living without love,
582
00:29:29.210 --> 00:29:32.053
well, maybe it is, maybe it\'s just simply knowledge.
583
00:29:33.777 --> 00:29:35.800
\"I see more now than then,
584
00:29:35.800 --> 00:29:38.970
but she who had my eyes, closed them in happiness
585
00:29:38.970 --> 00:29:41.290
and wrapped the dark in her arms,
586
00:29:41.290 --> 00:29:44.600
and stole my life away, singing in dreams
587
00:29:44.600 --> 00:29:45.953 line:15%
of what was sure to come.
588
00:29:46.820 --> 00:29:48.340 line:15%
I see it perfectly.
589
00:29:48.340 --> 00:29:50.990 line:15%
Except the beast fumbles and falters
590
00:29:50.990 --> 00:29:54.260
until the others wince, everything shimmers
591
00:29:54.260 --> 00:29:57.930
and glitters and shakes with unbearable longing,
592
00:29:57.930 --> 00:30:00.130
the dancers who cannot sleep
593
00:30:00.130 --> 00:30:02.507
and the sleepers who cannot dance.\"
594
00:30:03.600 --> 00:30:06.760
I suppose that art functions sometimes it seems to me
595
00:30:06.760 --> 00:30:11.003
just simply as an opening or an honesty.
596
00:30:11.970 --> 00:30:16.970
It is another way of enduring the rawness of existence.
597
00:30:17.310 --> 00:30:20.350 line:15%
598
00:30:20.350 --> 00:30:25.110 line:15%
is being able to turn terrible things into art.
599
00:30:25.110 --> 00:30:27.750
600
00:30:27.750 --> 00:30:31.810
She always loved him, wrote poems about him
601
00:30:31.810 --> 00:30:36.683
until the very end, made it funny, witty, loving,
602
00:30:40.810 --> 00:30:43.940
crazily, authentic.
603
00:30:43.940 --> 00:30:45.683
604
00:30:46.670 --> 00:30:50.023
And she knew what its value was.
605
00:30:51.170 --> 00:30:54.090
606
00:30:54.090 --> 00:30:56.630
you let me win at chess,
607
00:30:56.630 --> 00:31:00.100
while you felt my dress around the knees.
608
00:31:00.100 --> 00:31:03.510 line:15%
That room we went to 50 miles away,
609
00:31:03.510 --> 00:31:05.680 line:15%
Have those bus trips ended?
610
00:31:05.680 --> 00:31:08.320
611
00:31:08.320 --> 00:31:13.320 line:15%
is how to stabilize oneself in one\'s art.
612
00:31:13.610 --> 00:31:15.110 line:15%
And I think that\'s what she did.
613
00:31:15.110 --> 00:31:17.990 line:15%
It was like her rock, her anchor.
614
00:31:17.990 --> 00:31:19.640
615
00:31:19.640 --> 00:31:21.920
that poetry can do. It doesn\'t give you back
616
00:31:21.920 --> 00:31:23.440
your loved ones.
617
00:31:23.440 --> 00:31:25.370 line:15%
But it gives you a way to think about it.
618
00:31:25.370 --> 00:31:30.370
619
00:31:32.300 --> 00:31:36.730
620
00:31:36.730 --> 00:31:41.730
that poetry was for singing our deepest feelings.
621
00:31:43.160 --> 00:31:45.480
They didn\'t have to be positive,
622
00:31:45.480 --> 00:31:47.770
they didn\'t have to be pretty.
623
00:31:47.770 --> 00:31:52.523
Her capacity to write beauty was extraordinary.
624
00:31:54.310 --> 00:31:58.200 line:15%
And her capacity to write suffering
625
00:31:58.200 --> 00:32:03.200 line:15%
and loss and extremes of feeling was very important for me.
626
00:32:05.230 --> 00:32:07.190
627
00:32:07.190 --> 00:32:09.800
a child I was when I married you.
628
00:32:09.800 --> 00:32:13.163 line:15%
But I was a regular mid-west child, and you were a Jew.
629
00:32:14.040 --> 00:32:16.090 line:15%
My mother needled my father cold.
630
00:32:16.090 --> 00:32:18.600 line:15%
My father gambled his weekly gold.
631
00:32:18.600 --> 00:32:21.350
And I stayed young in my mind, though old
632
00:32:21.350 --> 00:32:23.103
as your regular children do.
633
00:32:23.940 --> 00:32:25.970
I didn\'t rah and I hardly raved.
634
00:32:25.970 --> 00:32:28.220
I loved my pa while my mother slaved,
635
00:32:28.220 --> 00:32:31.340
and it rubbed me raw how she scrimped and saved
636
00:32:31.340 --> 00:32:32.483
when I was so new.
637
00:32:33.360 --> 00:32:35.250
Then you took me in with your bony knees,
638
00:32:35.250 --> 00:32:37.360
and it wasn\'t them that I wanted to please
639
00:32:37.360 --> 00:32:40.410
it was Jesus Christ that I had to squeeze;
640
00:32:40.410 --> 00:32:42.470
Oh, glorious you.
641
00:32:42.470 --> 00:32:45.140
Life in the dead sprang up in me
642
00:32:45.140 --> 00:32:48.300
I walked the waves of the salty sea.
643
00:32:48.300 --> 00:32:51.330
I wept for my mother in Galilee.
644
00:32:51.330 --> 00:32:53.630
My ardent Jew.
645
00:32:53.630 --> 00:32:56.410
Love and touch and unity.
646
00:32:56.410 --> 00:32:57.410
Parting and joining;
647
00:32:58.260 --> 00:33:01.800
the trinity was flesh, the mind and the will to be.
648
00:33:01.800 --> 00:33:04.810
The world grew through me like a tree.
649
00:33:04.810 --> 00:33:08.610
Was it I who was old when you hung, my Jew?
650
00:33:08.610 --> 00:33:13.250
I shuffled and snuffled and whined for you.
651
00:33:13.250 --> 00:33:16.640
And the child climbed up where the dead tree grew
652
00:33:16.640 --> 00:33:20.323
and slowly died while she wept for you.
653
00:33:21.326 --> 00:33:23.763
Goyim wept for the beautiful Jew.
654
00:33:25.861 --> 00:33:28.278
[soft music]
655
00:33:30.400 --> 00:33:35.400
656
00:33:35.720 --> 00:33:39.520
and some recognition and some praise
657
00:33:40.370 --> 00:33:44.210
and some grief when he was no longer here
658
00:33:44.210 --> 00:33:47.893
to receive it himself, yeah.
659
00:33:49.600 --> 00:33:52.740
660
00:33:52.740 --> 00:33:56.310
and Ruth Stone had the guts to go towards that
661
00:33:56.310 --> 00:33:58.360
rather than away from it.
662
00:33:58.360 --> 00:34:00.882
663
00:34:00.882 --> 00:34:03.683
664
00:34:04.600 --> 00:34:07.400
No matter what was going on, I was looking at it.
665
00:34:07.400 --> 00:34:11.400
666
00:34:11.400 --> 00:34:15.110
that I definitely do avoid thinking about.
667
00:34:15.110 --> 00:34:19.460
668
00:34:19.460 --> 00:34:23.490
So on my way to school, I had to cross railroad tracks.
669
00:34:23.490 --> 00:34:26.490
And I\'d heard sirens in the night.
670
00:34:26.490 --> 00:34:29.170
And I looked down on the track and there was blood
671
00:34:29.170 --> 00:34:30.823
and skin and teeth.
672
00:34:31.660 --> 00:34:32.729
673
00:34:32.729 --> 00:34:35.490
674
00:34:35.490 --> 00:34:39.060
and brought \'em home, put \'em in my drawer in my desk
675
00:34:39.060 --> 00:34:42.380
or something and my mother found it.
676
00:34:42.380 --> 00:34:44.110
She was horrified.
677
00:34:44.110 --> 00:34:47.130
678
00:34:47.130 --> 00:34:50.000
that very few people have, in our time.
679
00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:52.640
680
00:34:52.640 --> 00:34:55.050
She was happy to add in the things that would maybe
681
00:34:55.050 --> 00:34:58.710 line:15%
kind of make people a little bit uneasy.
682
00:34:58.710 --> 00:35:01.040
683
00:35:01.040 --> 00:35:02.940
684
00:35:02.940 --> 00:35:04.790
Even people in the family, they love the poem,
685
00:35:04.790 --> 00:35:08.617
but it\'s kind of a terrible incident that happens.
686
00:35:08.617 --> 00:35:13.617
687
00:35:14.040 --> 00:35:17.010
crossing the highway.
688
00:35:17.010 --> 00:35:21.453
One of them pulling his body by the front feet,
689
00:35:22.600 --> 00:35:25.580
the hind legs dragging flat.
690
00:35:25.580 --> 00:35:30.320
Without thinking, you call the Humane Society.
691
00:35:30.320 --> 00:35:34.210
They came with a net and went for him.
692
00:35:34.210 --> 00:35:37.990
They were matter of fact, uniformed;
693
00:35:37.990 --> 00:35:39.900
there were two of them,
694
00:35:39.900 --> 00:35:43.563
their truck ominous, with a cage.
695
00:35:44.490 --> 00:35:47.020
He was hiding in the weeds.
696
00:35:47.020 --> 00:35:49.830
It was then you saw his eyes.
697
00:35:49.830 --> 00:35:51.880
He understood.
698
00:35:51.880 --> 00:35:53.113
He was trembling.
699
00:35:54.330 --> 00:35:58.460
After they took him, you begin to suffer regret.
700
00:35:58.460 --> 00:36:03.460
Years later, you remember his misfit body
701
00:36:03.640 --> 00:36:06.650
scrambling to reach the others.
702
00:36:06.650 --> 00:36:08.720
Even at this moment,
703
00:36:08.720 --> 00:36:13.457
your heart is going too fast; your hands sweat.\"
704
00:36:15.600 --> 00:36:20.280 line:15%
This poem doesn\'t have too many surprises, right?
705
00:36:20.280 --> 00:36:24.100 line:15%
This poem is told in a very familiar
706
00:36:26.520 --> 00:36:28.330 line:15%
way that stories are told.
707
00:36:28.330 --> 00:36:32.830
This happened, and then that happened, and this happened.
708
00:36:32.830 --> 00:36:37.810
Tell me what makes this an effective poem, then?
709
00:36:37.810 --> 00:36:41.290
710
00:36:41.290 --> 00:36:45.128
this poem is, like doing something and later regretting it,
711
00:36:45.128 --> 00:36:45.961
712
00:36:45.961 --> 00:36:47.270
it\'s the right thing to do in the moment
713
00:36:47.270 --> 00:36:48.470
and later regretting it.
714
00:36:49.540 --> 00:36:52.770
715
00:36:52.770 --> 00:36:57.240 line:15%
it was trying to fight for its own chance of survival.
716
00:36:57.240 --> 00:36:59.320 line:15%
And by her interfering,
717
00:36:59.320 --> 00:37:02.020
it meant that probably the pig would be put down,
718
00:37:02.020 --> 00:37:06.840
and it\'s suddenly so devastating.
719
00:37:06.840 --> 00:37:10.743
720
00:37:11.920 --> 00:37:14.400 line:15%
But the second reading, the third reading,
721
00:37:14.400 --> 00:37:15.233 line:15%
the fourth reading,
722
00:37:15.233 --> 00:37:18.010 line:15%
you discover what they\'re actually about, right?
723
00:37:18.010 --> 00:37:21.640
724
00:37:21.640 --> 00:37:23.250
an ideal in a way.
725
00:37:23.250 --> 00:37:27.930 line:15%
The fact that people who aren\'t necessarily
726
00:37:27.930 --> 00:37:31.840 line:15%
educated in poetry could understand her poems.
727
00:37:31.840 --> 00:37:33.270
I love that.
728
00:37:33.270 --> 00:37:37.100
729
00:37:37.100 --> 00:37:41.500
in the past tense, suddenly shifts to the present tense,
730
00:37:41.500 --> 00:37:46.500
that\'s often what poets do, they write about the past,
731
00:37:48.530 --> 00:37:52.883
but with keener insight into their actions.
732
00:37:55.050 --> 00:37:56.340
733
00:37:56.340 --> 00:37:58.960
So good, even at this moment
734
00:37:58.960 --> 00:38:02.150
the way she, you know, this, this, this.
735
00:38:02.150 --> 00:38:06.720
It was then, after, years later, even at this moment,
736
00:38:06.720 --> 00:38:08.400
and I love that you,
737
00:38:08.400 --> 00:38:12.510
which means her, her heart was going too fast,
738
00:38:12.510 --> 00:38:14.010
and her hands were sweating,
739
00:38:14.010 --> 00:38:19.010
and now, we, now sharing in that experience with her.
740
00:38:19.400 --> 00:38:22.420
741
00:38:22.420 --> 00:38:25.620
And I think that groundedness is useful
742
00:38:25.620 --> 00:38:27.010
for a number of readers,
743
00:38:27.010 --> 00:38:29.820
particularly those who feel as though poetry
744
00:38:29.820 --> 00:38:32.450
is some sort of of puzzle.
745
00:38:32.450 --> 00:38:37.450 line:15%
746
00:38:39.860 --> 00:38:41.053 line:15%
and terrible.
747
00:38:43.837 --> 00:38:47.440
748
00:38:47.440 --> 00:38:48.407 line:15%
749
00:38:48.407 --> 00:38:51.637 line:15%
750
00:38:51.637 --> 00:38:53.867 line:15%
751
00:38:53.867 --> 00:38:55.890 line:15%
752
00:38:55.890 --> 00:38:57.370 line:15%
Did what?
753
00:38:57.370 --> 00:39:00.480 line:15%
The muse leads her to a back stairway.
754
00:39:00.480 --> 00:39:03.380 line:15%
There is his undershirt in an old trunk.
755
00:39:03.380 --> 00:39:06.230
\'Smell that,\' the muse says.
756
00:39:06.230 --> 00:39:09.570
The widow inhales his lost perspiration
757
00:39:09.570 --> 00:39:12.090
\'You brute,\' she whimpers.
758
00:39:12.090 --> 00:39:14.300
The muse takes a bone out of her arm
759
00:39:14.300 --> 00:39:16.150
and knocks the widow senseless.
760
00:39:16.150 --> 00:39:17.520
\'She\'ll never learn,
761
00:39:17.520 --> 00:39:19.527
She\'ll never learn\' she says.\"
762
00:39:19.527 --> 00:39:20.686
763
00:39:20.686 --> 00:39:21.540
764
00:39:21.540 --> 00:39:23.550
765
00:39:23.550 --> 00:39:26.403
But she was the muse for so many of us.
766
00:39:29.638 --> 00:39:31.925
[upbeat music]
767
00:39:31.925 --> 00:39:35.008 line:15%
[indistinct chatter]
768
00:39:41.730 --> 00:39:45.250 line:15%
769
00:39:45.250 --> 00:39:48.830
And it reminded me of Mill Mountain and Roanoke,
770
00:39:48.830 --> 00:39:52.603
and it seemed like coming home.
771
00:39:54.110 --> 00:39:56.360
772
00:39:56.360 --> 00:39:57.450
See?
773
00:39:57.450 --> 00:39:58.283
It looks okay now.
774
00:39:58.283 --> 00:39:59.800
775
00:39:59.800 --> 00:40:02.030
776
00:40:02.030 --> 00:40:04.720
feels very much like this is part of their home.
777
00:40:04.720 --> 00:40:06.900 line:15%
Like, all my cousins, it\'s always been
778
00:40:06.900 --> 00:40:09.090 line:15%
a place the family gets together for,
779
00:40:09.090 --> 00:40:11.100 line:15%
like, for grandma\'s birthdays and stuff,
780
00:40:11.100 --> 00:40:12.533
a lot of times we would all come here.
781
00:40:12.533 --> 00:40:14.570 line:15%
782
00:40:14.570 --> 00:40:16.921 line:15%
it\'s been cleaned off some.
783
00:40:16.921 --> 00:40:19.240
It\'s been swept and I threw the garbage away.
784
00:40:19.240 --> 00:40:21.150
785
00:40:21.150 --> 00:40:21.983
786
00:40:22.830 --> 00:40:25.924
The countryside, everywhere is so beautiful.
787
00:40:25.924 --> 00:40:26.887
788
00:40:26.887 --> 00:40:29.887
But you certainly do have a lot of notebooks upstairs, Ruth.
789
00:40:31.590 --> 00:40:32.770
Of unpublished Poems.
790
00:40:32.770 --> 00:40:33.603
791
00:40:33.603 --> 00:40:35.590
And a lot eaten by mice.
792
00:40:35.590 --> 00:40:40.180
You pull a drawer out and it\'s just full of chewed up paper.
793
00:40:40.180 --> 00:40:42.573
I said the mice are full of poems.
794
00:40:43.730 --> 00:40:44.563
795
00:40:44.563 --> 00:40:47.060 line:15%
it\'s right in the middle of the country, you get field mice.
796
00:40:47.060 --> 00:40:48.463
797
00:40:50.050 --> 00:40:51.430
That was a good one.
798
00:40:51.430 --> 00:40:53.460
799
00:40:53.460 --> 00:40:58.460
But she had a kind of belief in this power of intuition,
800
00:41:00.620 --> 00:41:03.300
which had a mystical quality to it.
801
00:41:03.300 --> 00:41:07.767
802
00:41:09.680 --> 00:41:11.963
I suspect there are, many.
803
00:41:13.490 --> 00:41:17.430 line:15%
If an ant, crossing on the clothesline
804
00:41:17.430 --> 00:41:22.430 line:15%
from apple tree to apple tree, would think and think,
805
00:41:22.880 --> 00:41:27.330
it probably could not dream up Albert Einstein.
806
00:41:27.330 --> 00:41:31.960
807
00:41:31.960 --> 00:41:34.310
was really amazing.
808
00:41:34.310 --> 00:41:35.720 line:15%
Because she was really into science.
809
00:41:35.720 --> 00:41:38.230 line:15%
So she was reading about physics
810
00:41:38.230 --> 00:41:40.930 line:15%
and reading about the beginning of the universe
811
00:41:40.930 --> 00:41:42.860
and black holes.
812
00:41:42.860 --> 00:41:44.720
813
00:41:44.720 --> 00:41:47.920
it began coming to me while I was hanging the laundry,
814
00:41:47.920 --> 00:41:49.990
and the ants were crossing on the clothesline.
815
00:41:49.990 --> 00:41:51.250
It\'s all true.
816
00:41:51.250 --> 00:41:55.310
So I ran upstairs and grabbed a phonograph record
817
00:41:55.310 --> 00:41:56.540
and it had a hole in the middle.
818
00:41:56.540 --> 00:41:58.823
So I wrote around the hole.
819
00:41:59.660 --> 00:42:03.530
820
00:42:03.530 --> 00:42:06.640
with his clever formula that looks like
821
00:42:06.640 --> 00:42:10.440
little mandibles digging tunnels into the earth
822
00:42:10.440 --> 00:42:14.890
and bringing it up, grain by grain, smiling at you,
823
00:42:14.890 --> 00:42:19.890
his shy bushy smile, along an imaginary path
824
00:42:20.860 --> 00:42:23.610
from here to there.
825
00:42:23.610 --> 00:42:25.750
826
00:42:25.750 --> 00:42:29.100 line:15%
And sometimes she said that they would come backwards.
827
00:42:29.100 --> 00:42:30.650 line:15%
They\'d come from the bottom up.
828
00:42:31.570 --> 00:42:33.230
829
00:42:33.230 --> 00:42:34.723
beat up English Ford.
830
00:42:35.930 --> 00:42:38.190
And bouncing up and down the road,
831
00:42:38.190 --> 00:42:39.670
the floor would be littered
832
00:42:39.670 --> 00:42:41.760
with crumpled up pieces of paper.
833
00:42:41.760 --> 00:42:44.157
And every time I\'d pick them up, and say,
834
00:42:44.157 --> 00:42:46.080
\"This is a great poem!\"
835
00:42:46.080 --> 00:42:48.540
She\'d go, \"No, no, no, leave that alone.\"
836
00:42:48.540 --> 00:42:51.240
From her point of view, they were works in progress.
837
00:42:51.240 --> 00:42:53.400
But they were wonderful.
838
00:42:53.400 --> 00:42:55.323
839
00:42:56.660 --> 00:43:01.067
In a way, I think, it\'s weird, let\'s think how I do it.
840
00:43:04.390 --> 00:43:08.800
It comes, I feel it coming way off in the universe,
841
00:43:08.800 --> 00:43:12.050
whatever it\'s gonna, and it goes through me,
842
00:43:12.050 --> 00:43:15.520
and if I don\'t catch it, and write it down,
843
00:43:15.520 --> 00:43:17.970
it goes out and it\'s gone forever.
844
00:43:17.970 --> 00:43:21.700
845
00:43:21.700 --> 00:43:25.200 line:15%
that poetry traditionally had been associated with the wind.
846
00:43:25.200 --> 00:43:26.793 line:15%
And with inspiration.
847
00:43:27.720 --> 00:43:29.487
D. H. Lawrence has a line,
848
00:43:29.487 --> 00:43:33.110
\"Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!\"
849
00:43:33.110 --> 00:43:35.150
That the poet is actually a vehicle for something.
850
00:43:35.150 --> 00:43:37.600
Inspiration means in breathing.
851
00:43:37.600 --> 00:43:38.937
852
00:43:38.937 --> 00:43:41.330
and I hardly know what I\'ve written.
853
00:43:41.330 --> 00:43:42.437
You know [laughing loudly].
854
00:43:44.270 --> 00:43:46.207
Run off at the pen, as they say.
855
00:43:47.191 --> 00:43:52.191
[pen scratching]
[upbeat music]
856
00:43:54.230 --> 00:43:58.350 line:15%
857
00:43:58.350 --> 00:44:02.423 line:15%
there\'s a cat toy and, and checks.
858
00:44:04.200 --> 00:44:06.090
And then they\'ll be like,
859
00:44:06.090 --> 00:44:09.720
but I have to look at every single piece of paper.
860
00:44:09.720 --> 00:44:14.720
Because I\'ll find this is a poem!
861
00:44:16.720 --> 00:44:17.577
862
00:44:17.577 --> 00:44:22.430
863
00:44:22.430 --> 00:44:24.643
He\'s so indifferent.
864
00:44:26.110 --> 00:44:31.110
The dreams, so real, haunted all day by the night before.
865
00:44:33.410 --> 00:44:37.357
I make my elaborate cup of coffee.\"
866
00:44:40.320 --> 00:44:42.070
Then it\'s my cousin\'s phone number!
867
00:44:44.055 --> 00:44:47.240
But grandma was really proud of her library,
868
00:44:47.240 --> 00:44:50.080
you know, as any writer is, or reader.
869
00:44:50.080 --> 00:44:52.950
And that\'s why it\'s so important to have
870
00:44:52.950 --> 00:44:55.410
a space you can always come back to.
871
00:44:55.410 --> 00:44:59.250
She identified this as her place.
872
00:44:59.250 --> 00:45:00.900
There was nowhere else!
873
00:45:00.900 --> 00:45:04.423
Every other place was a, you know, apartment somewhere.
874
00:45:05.280 --> 00:45:10.280
875
00:45:10.400 --> 00:45:12.790
Mr. Tempesta.
876
00:45:12.790 --> 00:45:14.660 line:15%
I sneaked in two cats.
877
00:45:14.660 --> 00:45:16.520 line:15%
He screams, \"No pets!
878
00:45:16.520 --> 00:45:17.457 line:15%
No pets!\"
879
00:45:18.724 --> 00:45:22.970
I become my Aunt Virginia, proud but weak in the head.
880
00:45:22.970 --> 00:45:24.540
I remember Anna Magnani.
881
00:45:24.540 --> 00:45:27.533
I throw a few books, I shout.
882
00:45:29.070 --> 00:45:31.320
He wipes his eyes and opens his hands.
883
00:45:31.320 --> 00:45:34.400
Okay, okay, keep the dirty animals
884
00:45:34.400 --> 00:45:36.900
but no nails in the walls.
885
00:45:36.900 --> 00:45:37.773
We cry together.
886
00:45:38.978 --> 00:45:41.800
It\'s like that time, remember,
887
00:45:41.800 --> 00:45:45.310
when I ran into our living room naked,
888
00:45:45.310 --> 00:45:48.460
to get rid of that fire inspector.
889
00:45:48.460 --> 00:45:51.367
See what you miss by being dead?
890
00:45:51.367 --> 00:45:54.670
891
00:45:54.670 --> 00:45:57.130
892
00:45:57.130 --> 00:46:01.330
are so different from anybody else\'s poems.
893
00:46:01.330 --> 00:46:05.670
There is no style that is like Ruthie\'s,
894
00:46:05.670 --> 00:46:07.433
she didn\'t copy anybody!
895
00:46:10.447 --> 00:46:12.037
896
00:46:12.037 --> 00:46:14.530
\"My father put me in my mother,
897
00:46:14.530 --> 00:46:16.540
but he didn\'t pick me out.
898
00:46:16.540 --> 00:46:18.447
I am my own quick woman.\"
899
00:46:21.670 --> 00:46:24.915
You see, that\'s what she sounds like.
900
00:46:24.915 --> 00:46:27.415
901
00:46:28.430 --> 00:46:30.990
She lived like a poor person.
902
00:46:30.990 --> 00:46:33.610
903
00:46:33.610 --> 00:46:36.270
that would buy the groceries.
904
00:46:36.270 --> 00:46:38.180
905
00:46:38.180 --> 00:46:41.840
he had a little job in town, and he would bring home food
906
00:46:41.840 --> 00:46:43.530
from the restaurant where he worked.
907
00:46:43.530 --> 00:46:45.520
And that was what we were eating.
908
00:46:45.520 --> 00:46:48.000
909
00:46:48.000 --> 00:46:50.050
910
00:46:50.050 --> 00:46:51.890
she\'d sell a poem, I don\'t know.
911
00:46:51.890 --> 00:46:53.680
And then we had Burgess.
912
00:46:53.680 --> 00:46:54.910 line:15%
913
00:46:54.910 --> 00:46:57.380 line:15%
I can\'t remember Ruth complaining about a thing.
914
00:46:57.380 --> 00:46:59.190
915
00:46:59.190 --> 00:47:00.780
Even if you\'re really rich,
916
00:47:00.780 --> 00:47:03.234
you can\'t eat more than one meal at a time
917
00:47:03.234 --> 00:47:06.720
drink more than one glass of something at a time.
918
00:47:06.720 --> 00:47:09.630 line:15%
919
00:47:09.630 --> 00:47:12.160 line:15%
but not about treating herself.
920
00:47:12.160 --> 00:47:14.717 line:15%
921
00:47:14.717 --> 00:47:16.778 line:15%
\"Who will have me?
922
00:47:16.778 --> 00:47:18.730 line:15%
\'I will,\' said poverty.
923
00:47:18.730 --> 00:47:21.580
924
00:47:21.580 --> 00:47:26.100
Cheap, Secondhand Coat, Simplicity,
925
00:47:26.100 --> 00:47:29.840
they\'re all poems about living in poverty,
926
00:47:29.840 --> 00:47:33.350
living on the edge, living in obscurity,
927
00:47:33.350 --> 00:47:37.480
where the only place that she has and that she really loves
928
00:47:37.480 --> 00:47:39.840
is this really rather ramshackle,
929
00:47:39.840 --> 00:47:43.120
wonderful old farmhouse on the mountain,
930
00:47:43.120 --> 00:47:46.292
where she says she\'s like a possum up a tree,
931
00:47:46.292 --> 00:47:49.230
she\'s clinging to her place in the branches.
932
00:47:49.230 --> 00:47:51.640
933
00:47:51.640 --> 00:47:52.810
Without a furnace.
934
00:47:52.810 --> 00:47:54.340
935
00:47:54.340 --> 00:47:56.690 line:15%
they were like sleeping in an iceberg you know,
936
00:47:56.690 --> 00:47:59.700 line:15%
you\'d get in these sheets and they would kill you.
937
00:47:59.700 --> 00:48:01.010
938
00:48:01.010 --> 00:48:03.980 line:15%
939
00:48:03.980 --> 00:48:06.000 line:15%
as she always used to say.
940
00:48:06.000 --> 00:48:08.930 line:15%
But Ruth didn\'t have that security at all.
941
00:48:08.930 --> 00:48:12.310
She made do, she was an incredible survivor.
942
00:48:12.310 --> 00:48:14.690
943
00:48:14.690 --> 00:48:17.590
If that\'s what you have to do, that\'s what you have to do.
944
00:48:19.727 --> 00:48:24.050
945
00:48:24.050 --> 00:48:28.190
kept a handkerchief box, washed her undies,
946
00:48:28.190 --> 00:48:32.960
ate at the Holiday Inn, had a basement freezer,
947
00:48:32.960 --> 00:48:35.350
belonged to a bridge club.
948
00:48:35.350 --> 00:48:37.470
I think when I wake in the morning
949
00:48:37.470 --> 00:48:39.590
that I have turned into her.
950
00:48:39.590 --> 00:48:41.760
She hangs in the hall downstairs.
951
00:48:41.760 --> 00:48:44.240
A shadow with pulled threads.
952
00:48:44.240 --> 00:48:47.760
I pull her over my arms, skin of a matron.
953
00:48:47.760 --> 00:48:48.880
Where are you?
954
00:48:48.880 --> 00:48:53.523
I say to myself, to the orphaned body, and her coat says,
955
00:48:53.523 --> 00:48:56.550
\'Get your purse, have you got your keys?\'\"
956
00:48:58.020 --> 00:48:59.680
957
00:48:59.680 --> 00:49:01.150
958
00:49:01.150 --> 00:49:02.930
I don\'t think understand or know about Ruth
959
00:49:02.930 --> 00:49:05.330
is that she never went to college.
960
00:49:05.330 --> 00:49:08.040
So it was obviously difficult for her to get a teaching job.
961
00:49:08.040 --> 00:49:10.510
She ended up getting a lot of teaching jobs.
962
00:49:10.510 --> 00:49:12.950
963
00:49:12.950 --> 00:49:16.353
as a roaming Professor, like a minstrel poet should be.
964
00:49:18.220 --> 00:49:21.070 line:15%
965
00:49:21.070 --> 00:49:23.810 line:15%
and then the car was always breaking too.
966
00:49:23.810 --> 00:49:25.677
She\'d be trying to get it going, and we\'d be,
967
00:49:25.677 --> 00:49:28.250
\"Come on mom, hurry, we\'re gonna be late.\"
968
00:49:28.250 --> 00:49:31.850
969
00:49:31.850 --> 00:49:36.560
mostly she would get a one year temporary lectureship.
970
00:49:36.560 --> 00:49:41.200
971
00:49:41.200 --> 00:49:43.100
to come and teach.
972
00:49:43.100 --> 00:49:44.870
I\'m ashamed of it.
973
00:49:44.870 --> 00:49:47.470
But she didn\'t have a job at that time,
974
00:49:47.470 --> 00:49:50.300
and there was this particular job that was open,
975
00:49:50.300 --> 00:49:53.610
of a visiting poet and it had this particular salary
976
00:49:53.610 --> 00:49:54.523
attached to it.
977
00:49:55.500 --> 00:49:58.590
Can you imagine me asking Ruth Stone to come
978
00:49:58.590 --> 00:50:00.683
and be a visiting poet?
979
00:50:02.310 --> 00:50:04.080
And she would take it?
980
00:50:04.080 --> 00:50:04.983
In her 80s?
981
00:50:07.290 --> 00:50:08.710
982
00:50:08.710 --> 00:50:13.270
And traveled and traveled and worked and worked and drove.
983
00:50:13.270 --> 00:50:16.550
But it gave me a certain kind of freedom.
984
00:50:16.550 --> 00:50:18.933
And I had a freedom with the students
985
00:50:18.933 --> 00:50:21.380
because I wasn\'t anybody.
986
00:50:21.380 --> 00:50:25.420 line:15%
987
00:50:25.420 --> 00:50:29.940 line:15%
encouraged us to write without fear, breaking taboos,
988
00:50:29.940 --> 00:50:32.200
if there were taboos in the room,
989
00:50:32.200 --> 00:50:33.800
in the rooms of our mind.
990
00:50:33.800 --> 00:50:37.320 line:15%
991
00:50:37.320 --> 00:50:39.740 line:15%
that she received tenure at Binghamton,
992
00:50:39.740 --> 00:50:41.970
SUNY, where she\'d been teaching for a while,
993
00:50:41.970 --> 00:50:45.000
despite the fact that she didn\'t have a college degree.
994
00:50:45.000 --> 00:50:47.220
995
00:50:47.220 --> 00:50:48.910 line:15%
and I\'d always be late coming to class.
996
00:50:48.910 --> 00:50:51.890 line:15%
And I\'d always be seeing her driving her old car
997
00:50:51.890 --> 00:50:55.040 line:15%
and she would be just driving fast to the parking lot
998
00:50:55.040 --> 00:50:56.110
and swerving around.
999
00:50:56.110 --> 00:50:58.670
And then she\'d look out the window and she would wave to me.
1000
00:50:58.670 --> 00:50:59.740
I would come into class,
1001
00:50:59.740 --> 00:51:02.010
and then she would come into class a few minutes later.
1002
00:51:02.010 --> 00:51:04.350
It\'s one of those classes, you never wanted to end.
1003
00:51:04.350 --> 00:51:07.290
And I actually remember Ruth was retiring
1004
00:51:07.290 --> 00:51:09.220
and she was leaving the university.
1005
00:51:09.220 --> 00:51:12.070
And on the last day, she was walking to her car,
1006
00:51:12.070 --> 00:51:14.140
and she was like the mother duckling.
1007
00:51:14.140 --> 00:51:15.450
And all of us little students
1008
00:51:15.450 --> 00:51:16.700
were like the little ducklings,
1009
00:51:16.700 --> 00:51:20.020
just following her and following her and following her.
1010
00:51:20.020 --> 00:51:21.820
And when she finally got to her car,
1011
00:51:21.820 --> 00:51:23.420
it was like, we didn\'t know what to do.
1012
00:51:23.420 --> 00:51:26.210
She like, got in, and kind of drove away.
1013
00:51:26.210 --> 00:51:27.650
And we weren\'t really saying much.
1014
00:51:27.650 --> 00:51:30.523
But we knew that we were being [bus honking]
1015
00:51:30.523 --> 00:51:32.170
I don\'t know, bumped out of the nest.
1016
00:51:32.170 --> 00:51:35.970
and it was our job to take what we learned in class
1017
00:51:35.970 --> 00:51:37.983
and apply it to the real world.
1018
00:51:39.341 --> 00:51:40.174
1019
00:51:40.174 --> 00:51:41.960
1020
00:51:41.960 --> 00:51:46.370
1021
00:51:46.370 --> 00:51:48.480
with the old boys club.
1022
00:51:48.480 --> 00:51:50.950
There were plenty of pompous academics
1023
00:51:50.950 --> 00:51:54.830
and poets and critics who didn\'t respect her.
1024
00:51:54.830 --> 00:51:58.700
1025
00:51:58.700 --> 00:52:03.700 line:15%
was women\'s poetry, and was not serious poetry.
1026
00:52:03.730 --> 00:52:06.980
That it didn\'t take up the big questions.
1027
00:52:06.980 --> 00:52:11.110
1028
00:52:11.110 --> 00:52:14.320
had it 20 or 30 times worse.
1029
00:52:14.320 --> 00:52:19.290
It was so powerful a part of one\'s life.
1030
00:52:19.290 --> 00:52:23.170
1031
00:52:23.170 --> 00:52:26.890
somewhat eccentric, she simply didn\'t have access
1032
00:52:26.890 --> 00:52:31.690
to all the editorial and publicity mechanisms that,
1033
00:52:31.690 --> 00:52:34.050
believe it or not, make a poet\'s life.
1034
00:52:34.050 --> 00:52:36.850
1035
00:52:36.850 --> 00:52:41.670
In terms of class and snobbery and contempt.
1036
00:52:41.670 --> 00:52:43.550
1037
00:52:43.550 --> 00:52:48.550
And male poets did not like that, at all.
1038
00:52:48.570 --> 00:52:53.160 line:15%
1039
00:52:53.160 --> 00:52:55.690
a lot of the poetry world is hokey.
1040
00:52:55.690 --> 00:52:59.170
There was a lot of competition and showing off and
1041
00:53:00.302 --> 00:53:01.270
yuckety yuck.
1042
00:53:01.270 --> 00:53:03.320
1043
00:53:04.630 --> 00:53:07.230
1044
00:53:07.230 --> 00:53:11.040
but she aligned herself with women poets,
1045
00:53:11.040 --> 00:53:16.040
and she aligned herself with women, period.
1046
00:53:16.120 --> 00:53:18.203
1047
00:53:18.203 --> 00:53:21.190
I think women ought to be given a fair treatment
1048
00:53:21.190 --> 00:53:22.850
and equality.
1049
00:53:22.850 --> 00:53:25.270
1050
00:53:25.270 --> 00:53:28.570 line:15%
But, y\'know, born in 1915, there\'s no way around
1051
00:53:28.570 --> 00:53:32.510 line:15%
the fact that you\'ve been having to deal with inequality
1052
00:53:32.510 --> 00:53:34.190
your entire life.
1053
00:53:34.190 --> 00:53:38.110
1054
00:53:38.110 --> 00:53:40.340 line:15%
you didn\'t do things for your art,
1055
00:53:40.340 --> 00:53:42.650 line:15%
you did things first for the family.
1056
00:53:42.650 --> 00:53:44.720
And she did a lot for her family.
1057
00:53:44.720 --> 00:53:47.910
But she also never gave up on the poetry.
1058
00:53:47.910 --> 00:53:49.680
And I think that\'s really what a feminist is.
1059
00:53:49.680 --> 00:53:52.910
A feminist is not running around burning your bra.
1060
00:53:52.910 --> 00:53:54.780
1061
00:53:54.780 --> 00:53:57.720
and is the kind of poet who is engaging with life,
1062
00:53:57.720 --> 00:53:59.970
rather than like presenting as a poet,
1063
00:53:59.970 --> 00:54:02.550 line:15%
pimping that poet that you supposedly are,
1064
00:54:02.550 --> 00:54:05.290 line:15%
like, that\'s totally a different thing.
1065
00:54:05.290 --> 00:54:07.010
Those people have the kinds of egos
1066
00:54:07.010 --> 00:54:08.200
that I don\'t think your grandmother did
1067
00:54:08.200 --> 00:54:10.210
because she wasn\'t interested in that so much.
1068
00:54:10.210 --> 00:54:12.020
1069
00:54:12.020 --> 00:54:13.890
because a lot of poets knew her.
1070
00:54:13.890 --> 00:54:16.600
But she didn\'t know how to publicize herself.
1071
00:54:16.600 --> 00:54:19.240 line:15%
1072
00:54:19.240 --> 00:54:24.240
and then she also would pull back and retreat to Goshen.
1073
00:54:25.390 --> 00:54:27.300
She didn\'t make it easy.
1074
00:54:27.300 --> 00:54:28.960
1075
00:54:28.960 --> 00:54:31.330
because our experience with the poetry world
1076
00:54:31.330 --> 00:54:34.393 line:15%
is so different now than grandma\'s was, you know.
1077
00:54:34.393 --> 00:54:36.420 line:15%
1078
00:54:36.420 --> 00:54:38.855
posting selfies from the brook.
1079
00:54:38.855 --> 00:54:39.800
[both laughing]
1080
00:54:39.800 --> 00:54:41.690
1081
00:54:41.690 --> 00:54:46.690
1082
00:54:46.730 --> 00:54:49.150
with a sort of crazy hair-do,
1083
00:54:49.150 --> 00:54:52.360
who was a widow who hadn\'t stopped grieving,
1084
00:54:52.360 --> 00:54:54.799
and who had raised all these daughters,
1085
00:54:54.799 --> 00:54:57.520
and that\'s who she was, and that\'s who she was going to be.
1086
00:54:57.520 --> 00:55:00.340
She wasn\'t going to be anyone else.
1087
00:55:00.340 --> 00:55:03.470 line:15%
1088
00:55:03.470 --> 00:55:07.820 line:15%
The bed was really too small for both of us.
1089
00:55:07.820 --> 00:55:10.030
In that same rooming house
1090
00:55:10.030 --> 00:55:13.080 line:15%
Walls were lined with filing cases,
1091
00:55:13.080 --> 00:55:16.830 line:15%
Drawers of birds\' eggs packed in cotton.
1092
00:55:16.830 --> 00:55:20.450 line:15%
The landlady, widow of the ornithologist,
1093
00:55:20.450 --> 00:55:23.160
Actually he was a postal clerk,
1094
00:55:23.160 --> 00:55:27.520
had accompanied him on his holidays collecting eggs.
1095
00:55:27.520 --> 00:55:30.000
Yes, he would send her up the tree
1096
00:55:30.000 --> 00:55:31.977
And when she faltered he would shout,
1097
00:55:31.977 --> 00:55:33.662
\"Put it in your mouth!
1098
00:55:33.662 --> 00:55:35.567
[audience laughs]
Put it in your mouth.\"
1099
00:55:35.567 --> 00:55:37.570
\"It was nasty,\" she said,
1100
00:55:38.510 --> 00:55:40.563
Closing the drawer with her knee.
1101
00:55:42.090 --> 00:55:47.090
Eggs, eggs, eggs in secret muted shapes in my head;
1102
00:55:47.830 --> 00:55:51.110
hundreds of unborn wizened eggs.
1103
00:55:51.110 --> 00:55:53.933
I think about them when I think of you.
1104
00:55:56.924 --> 00:55:57.757
[audience applauding]
1105
00:55:57.757 --> 00:55:59.660
1106
00:55:59.660 --> 00:56:02.250
because he knew what literary politics were
1107
00:56:02.250 --> 00:56:03.410
and how to use them.
1108
00:56:03.410 --> 00:56:07.380 line:15%
1109
00:56:07.380 --> 00:56:09.480
He was determined to get it published.
1110
00:56:09.480 --> 00:56:12.710
He sent it out to Harcourt Brace, and they rejected it.
1111
00:56:12.710 --> 00:56:16.494 line:15%
1112
00:56:16.494 --> 00:56:18.580 line:15%
you\'re making a big mistake here.
1113
00:56:18.580 --> 00:56:20.880
And he was so good with words.
1114
00:56:20.880 --> 00:56:22.660
1115
00:56:22.660 --> 00:56:24.890
We made a mistake, sorry, we\'ll take it.
1116
00:56:24.890 --> 00:56:28.440
1117
00:56:28.440 --> 00:56:31.020
which she received a huge amount of attention for.
1118
00:56:31.020 --> 00:56:33.210
She was written up in Poetry Magazine
1119
00:56:33.210 --> 00:56:34.380
along with Sylvia Plath.
1120
00:56:34.380 --> 00:56:36.160
So she did receive some notoriety
1121
00:56:36.160 --> 00:56:37.860
at the beginning of her career.
1122
00:56:37.860 --> 00:56:40.210
But then, of course, Walter died,
1123
00:56:40.210 --> 00:56:43.350
and she didn\'t publish with major publishers
1124
00:56:43.350 --> 00:56:45.900
for the next 25, 30 years.
1125
00:56:45.900 --> 00:56:48.140
She didn\'t win many prizes.
1126
00:56:48.140 --> 00:56:50.730
1127
00:56:51.660 --> 00:56:54.556 line:15%
do another book of hers.
1128
00:56:54.556 --> 00:56:55.389 line:15%
1129
00:56:55.389 --> 00:56:56.807 line:15%
1130
00:56:56.807 --> 00:56:59.123
I would have published anything of hers.
1131
00:57:00.750 --> 00:57:02.960
1132
00:57:02.960 --> 00:57:05.460
1133
00:57:05.460 --> 00:57:07.490
And we\'ve done enough.
1134
00:57:07.490 --> 00:57:09.530
I said, \"Well I think this book would probably
1135
00:57:09.530 --> 00:57:11.207
recover its costs.\"
1136
00:57:12.267 --> 00:57:13.423
\"No, Bill.
1137
00:57:14.320 --> 00:57:15.153
No.
1138
00:57:16.380 --> 00:57:17.877
We\'re not gonna do it.\"
1139
00:57:20.130 --> 00:57:22.503
1140
00:57:23.460 --> 00:57:26.220
I\'m an African American poet.
1141
00:57:26.220 --> 00:57:29.220
And in the 80s, when I was in graduate school,
1142
00:57:29.220 --> 00:57:32.020
I never read a black poet, I never read a woman poet.
1143
00:57:32.020 --> 00:57:33.503
We read Sylvia Plath.
1144
00:57:34.920 --> 00:57:39.920
You know, so historically, there are a lot of silences
1145
00:57:41.100 --> 00:57:43.810
and blindnesses in literature.
1146
00:57:43.810 --> 00:57:46.500
1147
00:57:46.500 --> 00:57:48.550
and the internet age, I mean,
1148
00:57:48.550 --> 00:57:52.370
now we have so much opportunity to put our work
1149
00:57:52.370 --> 00:57:54.050
out there for free.
1150
00:57:54.050 --> 00:57:55.970
And that\'s really-
1151
00:57:55.970 --> 00:57:57.237
1152
00:57:57.237 --> 00:57:59.390
1153
00:57:59.390 --> 00:58:00.780
But that\'s, it\'s not about money.
1154
00:58:00.780 --> 00:58:04.090
You know, it\'s like, I mean, the money will come
1155
00:58:04.090 --> 00:58:07.570
1156
00:58:07.570 --> 00:58:09.270
Why then is it published?
1157
00:58:09.270 --> 00:58:14.270
Because good editors, in good houses,
1158
00:58:14.920 --> 00:58:17.400
have literary consciences.
1159
00:58:17.400 --> 00:58:21.580
And it\'s part of our job to promote good work.
1160
00:58:21.580 --> 00:58:25.260
1161
00:58:25.260 --> 00:58:26.833
of the 20th century?
1162
00:58:28.890 --> 00:58:31.640
1163
00:58:31.640 --> 00:58:35.283
Talent in poetry grows by itself in the dark.
1164
00:58:36.360 --> 00:58:40.080
The people around her, the poets in her generation,
1165
00:58:40.080 --> 00:58:42.920
Adrienne Rich being the most well known,
1166
00:58:42.920 --> 00:58:46.960
but Adrienne Rich was a superb manager of her own career.
1167
00:58:46.960 --> 00:58:48.950
Ruth never knew she had a career.
1168
00:58:48.950 --> 00:58:50.190
She wrote her poems.
1169
00:58:50.190 --> 00:58:54.020
1170
00:58:54.020 --> 00:58:57.040
they came through me, I did not write them.
1171
00:58:57.040 --> 00:58:59.200
1172
00:58:59.200 --> 00:59:02.800
That she lived in Vermont and not in New York?
1173
00:59:02.800 --> 00:59:05.420
And so she was kind of out of the center?
1174
00:59:05.420 --> 00:59:10.420
That she was not all that polite to some of the great male,
1175
00:59:12.340 --> 00:59:14.130
white poets?
1176
00:59:14.130 --> 00:59:16.413
1177
00:59:17.550 --> 00:59:18.420
Who you know.
1178
00:59:18.420 --> 00:59:20.380
1179
00:59:20.380 --> 00:59:25.380
like Rimbaud and Keats, and I don\'t know.
1180
00:59:26.970 --> 00:59:27.803
I\'m trying to think of-
1181
00:59:27.803 --> 00:59:29.440 line:15%
1182
00:59:29.440 --> 00:59:30.273 line:15%
1183
00:59:30.273 --> 00:59:33.050 line:15%
1184
00:59:33.050 --> 00:59:34.230 line:15%
brilliant things, so
1185
00:59:36.010 --> 00:59:37.350
1186
00:59:37.350 --> 00:59:38.950
1187
00:59:38.950 --> 00:59:41.481
1188
00:59:41.481 --> 00:59:42.433
1189
00:59:43.329 --> 00:59:44.420
1190
00:59:44.420 --> 00:59:48.010
1191
00:59:51.110 --> 00:59:52.463 line:15%
and being discovered.
1192
00:59:53.580 --> 00:59:55.360 line:15%
It didn\'t really happen for her in the way
1193
00:59:55.360 --> 00:59:58.030 line:15%
that would have made life more comfortable for her.
1194
00:59:58.030 --> 01:00:00.160
1195
01:00:00.160 --> 01:00:03.520
and she did get an NEA, so she was being recognized.
1196
01:00:03.520 --> 01:00:05.490
She also won the Wallace Stevens prize
1197
01:00:05.490 --> 01:00:07.570
which is a $100,000 Prize.
1198
01:00:07.570 --> 01:00:10.340 line:15%
1199
01:00:10.340 --> 01:00:12.500 line:15%
And I was with her, which was really special.
1200
01:00:12.500 --> 01:00:13.847 line:15%
And suddenly people were saying,
1201
01:00:13.847 --> 01:00:15.640 line:15%
\"wow, that was your grandmother
1202
01:00:15.640 --> 01:00:17.877 line:15%
who just won the National Book Award in poetry.\"
1203
01:00:17.877 --> 01:00:20.880 line:15%
1204
01:00:20.880 --> 01:00:22.420 line:15%
at the end of her life.
1205
01:00:22.420 --> 01:00:23.640
But she always wondered,
1206
01:00:23.640 --> 01:00:25.850 line:15%
I remember her asking me this question many times
1207
01:00:25.850 --> 01:00:29.287 line:15%
when she was lying in bed at her daughter Marsha\'s house,
1208
01:00:29.287 --> 01:00:32.167
\"Do you think I\'ll be remembered as a great poet?\"
1209
01:00:33.310 --> 01:00:35.670
1210
01:00:35.670 --> 01:00:40.150 line:15%
And Ruth did not project either a longing for those.
1211
01:00:40.150 --> 01:00:42.050 line:15%
And then when they all came,
1212
01:00:42.050 --> 01:00:44.510 line:15%
I\'m not sure how much it mattered,
1213
01:00:44.510 --> 01:00:47.230
whether it was too little too late,
1214
01:00:47.230 --> 01:00:52.230
or whether it provided her with some kind of validation.
1215
01:00:55.420 --> 01:00:58.470
1216
01:00:58.470 --> 01:01:01.031
That isn\'t what their work is about.
1217
01:01:01.031 --> 01:01:04.940
Their work actually keeps them alive.
1218
01:01:04.940 --> 01:01:06.973
1219
01:01:08.030 --> 01:01:08.863
Never.
1220
01:01:08.863 --> 01:01:12.140
But one day she, I think she might have been feeling bad.
1221
01:01:12.140 --> 01:01:15.010
And I said, write a poem and she couldn\'t see
1222
01:01:15.010 --> 01:01:16.700
and she could hardly write.
1223
01:01:16.700 --> 01:01:18.910
But she got this look on her face,
1224
01:01:18.910 --> 01:01:23.280
that was a smile, a sneaky kind of smile when I said
1225
01:01:23.280 --> 01:01:26.420
write a poem and she started thinking about it, it was like,
1226
01:01:26.420 --> 01:01:29.563
the most delicious thing she could think of to do.
1227
01:01:30.790 --> 01:01:33.270
1228
01:01:33.270 --> 01:01:36.503
remembering the red winged blackbird\'s clack.
1229
01:01:37.720 --> 01:01:42.720 line:15%
Then I want no thing except to turn time back
1230
01:01:42.820 --> 01:01:46.793 line:15%
to what I had before love made me sad.
1231
01:01:48.410 --> 01:01:50.600
When I forget to weep,
1232
01:01:50.600 --> 01:01:55.583
I hear the peeping tree toads creeping up the bark.
1233
01:01:56.490 --> 01:01:59.164
Love lies asleep and dreams
1234
01:01:59.164 --> 01:02:03.173
that everything is in its golden net;
1235
01:02:04.490 --> 01:02:08.363
and I am caught there too when I forget.
1236
01:02:09.840 --> 01:02:12.470
1237
01:02:12.470 --> 01:02:14.620
she kind of didn\'t say anything more,
1238
01:02:14.620 --> 01:02:19.097
although she lived for some hours afterwards, was,
1239
01:02:19.097 --> 01:02:20.777
\"Everybody has to die.\"
1240
01:02:22.530 --> 01:02:24.380
1241
01:02:25.240 --> 01:02:30.193
1242
01:02:32.280 --> 01:02:33.860
1243
01:02:33.860 --> 01:02:37.140 line:15%
you\'re on social media and then the next thing you know,
1244
01:02:37.140 --> 01:02:40.370 line:15%
there\'s a New York Times article that pops up that says,
1245
01:02:40.370 --> 01:02:42.680
Ruth Stone passed away,
1246
01:02:42.680 --> 01:02:45.650
and it was kind of a feeling of shock.
1247
01:02:45.650 --> 01:02:49.380
1248
01:02:49.380 --> 01:02:52.620
and invited me and I drove there.
1249
01:02:52.620 --> 01:02:56.010 line:15%
And I\'d get on these little roads, and there\'d be nobody.
1250
01:02:56.010 --> 01:02:59.407
And you know, you\'d come to these edges and precipices,
1251
01:02:59.407 --> 01:03:01.400
and I\'m scared of heights.
1252
01:03:01.400 --> 01:03:04.090
So it was a journey for me.
1253
01:03:04.090 --> 01:03:08.600
But the thing that amazed me is when I got to the house,
1254
01:03:08.600 --> 01:03:13.600
and I opened the front door, there was Ruth\'s casket.
1255
01:03:15.810 --> 01:03:18.280
It was this plain pine box.
1256
01:03:18.280 --> 01:03:21.240
1257
01:03:21.240 --> 01:03:23.250
1258
01:03:23.250 --> 01:03:27.763
And then of course we had to put Ruth in it!
1259
01:03:30.010 --> 01:03:34.640
And she was she was in the garage!
1260
01:03:34.640 --> 01:03:37.890
1261
01:03:37.890 --> 01:03:42.890
1262
01:03:44.540 --> 01:03:48.230
like a child, and you could see her face,
1263
01:03:48.230 --> 01:03:52.850
and she had like a little gray curl sticking out.
1264
01:03:52.850 --> 01:03:54.720
1265
01:03:54.720 --> 01:03:56.640
trying to figure out what to do with the body,
1266
01:03:56.640 --> 01:03:59.740 line:15%
it was really a creepy learning experience
1267
01:03:59.740 --> 01:04:02.270 line:15%
on what happens when somebody does die.
1268
01:04:02.270 --> 01:04:07.270 line:15%
And what you\'re expected to do, what you can do,
1269
01:04:07.790 --> 01:04:09.340
what\'s legal.
1270
01:04:09.340 --> 01:04:14.340
1271
01:04:15.641 --> 01:04:17.091
and just picking up this body
1272
01:04:18.110 --> 01:04:20.930
and putting it in this wood box.
1273
01:04:20.930 --> 01:04:24.543
And then closing it, you know.
1274
01:04:25.750 --> 01:04:27.363
1275
01:04:29.394 --> 01:04:30.894
And we were broke.
1276
01:04:34.440 --> 01:04:36.010
1277
01:04:36.010 --> 01:04:40.090
So it\'s not like I haven\'t been around death.
1278
01:04:40.090 --> 01:04:44.300
But this way, not in an embalming room.
1279
01:04:44.300 --> 01:04:46.180
1280
01:04:47.450 --> 01:04:49.050
there\'s a lot of kind of leeway now
1281
01:04:49.050 --> 01:04:51.303
because they\'re running out of space to bury people.
1282
01:04:51.303 --> 01:04:54.260
There\'s a lot of leeway in what, you know,
1283
01:04:54.260 --> 01:04:55.553
using your own land.
1284
01:04:56.390 --> 01:04:58.440
And we\'re, of course, lucky to be in Vermont
1285
01:04:58.440 --> 01:05:01.091
where there\'s space to do that.
1286
01:05:01.091 --> 01:05:04.500 line:15%
1287
01:05:04.500 --> 01:05:09.500 line:15%
We carried her coffin behind the house to the burial site,
1288
01:05:09.930 --> 01:05:14.653
where we then lowered her coffin into the ground.
1289
01:05:18.930 --> 01:05:23.010
1290
01:05:23.010 --> 01:05:26.983
Ella Fitzgerald singing September Song,
1291
01:05:28.020 --> 01:05:30.327
because that was her favorite song.
1292
01:05:31.598 --> 01:05:34.060
♪ As time came along ♪
1293
01:05:34.060 --> 01:05:38.810 line:15%
1294
01:05:38.810 --> 01:05:42.580 line:15%
and with each other, and there she is.
1295
01:05:42.580 --> 01:05:47.580
Still on the land, still with us there.
1296
01:05:47.600 --> 01:05:50.650
1297
01:05:50.650 --> 01:05:53.420
was the most emotional to the point where I wondered
1298
01:05:53.420 --> 01:05:55.330
about the depth of her grief.
1299
01:05:55.330 --> 01:05:58.090
And it was, it just seemed bottomless to me.
1300
01:05:58.090 --> 01:06:00.547
♪ But it\'s a long while ♪
1301
01:06:00.547 --> 01:06:05.210 line:15%
1302
01:06:05.210 --> 01:06:07.823
So I\'ve always loved this house.
1303
01:06:09.050 --> 01:06:11.090
Makes me miss her so much.
1304
01:06:11.090 --> 01:06:14.020
1305
01:06:15.260 --> 01:06:20.260
what is supposed to happen when great poets die?
1306
01:06:20.480 --> 01:06:22.780 line:15%
1307
01:06:22.780 --> 01:06:26.240
So we talked with her about having a Trust,
1308
01:06:26.240 --> 01:06:30.770
because she did want the house to be used for artistic work,
1309
01:06:30.770 --> 01:06:33.470
writing and drawing and poetry.
1310
01:06:33.470 --> 01:06:36.130
1311
01:06:36.130 --> 01:06:39.140
that Ruth made things in because this was where
1312
01:06:39.140 --> 01:06:42.600
she wrote her poems and when she wasn\'t here
1313
01:06:42.600 --> 01:06:44.627
she wrote about this place.
1314
01:06:44.627 --> 01:06:46.287
1315
01:06:46.287 --> 01:06:48.070
\"Plumbing is so intimate.
1316
01:06:48.070 --> 01:06:49.650
He hooks up your toilet.
1317
01:06:49.650 --> 01:06:51.580
He places a wax ring
1318
01:06:51.580 --> 01:06:52.830
1319
01:06:52.830 --> 01:06:54.030
where your shit will go.
1320
01:06:54.914 --> 01:06:56.670
And you are grateful to him.
1321
01:06:56.670 --> 01:06:58.820
He is a god with wrenches;
1322
01:06:58.820 --> 01:07:02.610
a quiet young man using a flame torch.
1323
01:07:02.610 --> 01:07:03.970 line:15%
He solders the joints.
1324
01:07:03.970 --> 01:07:05.930
1325
01:07:05.930 --> 01:07:07.830
over the boxes of furniture,
1326
01:07:07.830 --> 01:07:10.570
the trains, the ripped sleeping bags,
1327
01:07:10.570 --> 01:07:13.660
the Beatles posters, the camp cots, the dishes
1328
01:07:13.660 --> 01:07:17.610
the bed springs, to wire up the hot water tank.
1329
01:07:17.610 --> 01:07:21.100
And you admire him as you would Saint Francis
1330
01:07:21.100 --> 01:07:24.370
for his simple acceptance of how things are.
1331
01:07:24.370 --> 01:07:27.260
And the water comes like a miracle.
1332
01:07:27.260 --> 01:07:30.660
And you feel comfortable, taken care of,
1333
01:07:30.660 --> 01:07:34.550
like some rich Roman matron, who had just been loved
1334
01:07:34.550 --> 01:07:35.383
by a boy.
1335
01:07:38.530 --> 01:07:39.970
1336
01:07:39.970 --> 01:07:43.400
I understand that poem very intimately.
1337
01:07:43.400 --> 01:07:46.290 line:15%
The same toilet was just recently fixed.
1338
01:07:46.290 --> 01:07:47.357
The guy who fixed it was like
1339
01:07:47.357 --> 01:07:50.220
\"Yeah, Ruth signed and gave that poem to me,
1340
01:07:50.220 --> 01:07:52.897
\'cause I was the guy who she was writing about.\"
1341
01:07:53.880 --> 01:07:56.620
1342
01:07:56.620 --> 01:07:59.720
of making sure that her poems stay in print
1343
01:07:59.720 --> 01:08:02.500
and fixing the house finally.
1344
01:08:02.500 --> 01:08:05.520
Because it\'s always been in need of fixing.
1345
01:08:05.520 --> 01:08:08.680
And making it what it was at its peak.
1346
01:08:08.680 --> 01:08:11.480
When lots of people were coming and going
1347
01:08:11.480 --> 01:08:13.971
and making things here.
1348
01:08:13.971 --> 01:08:17.410
[upbeat music]
1349
01:08:17.410 --> 01:08:18.890 line:15%
1350
01:08:18.890 --> 01:08:22.000
Hopefully you figured out the method of the silent auction,
1351
01:08:22.000 --> 01:08:26.090
just write down your name and address on your bid
1352
01:08:26.090 --> 01:08:28.170
and then we can contact you,
1353
01:08:28.170 --> 01:08:30.330 line:15%
I mean really just your phone number and email,
1354
01:08:30.330 --> 01:08:33.103 line:15%
social security number, credit card number,
1355
01:08:33.103 --> 01:08:34.421 line:15%
would be fine.
1356
01:08:34.421 --> 01:08:39.421
It was a great day when Ruth found her property
1357
01:08:39.510 --> 01:08:42.700
on 788 Hathaway Road in the back of a magazine
1358
01:08:42.700 --> 01:08:47.700
and purchased it, with money she won with a poetry award.
1359
01:08:47.700 --> 01:08:49.570
It was truly her home.
1360
01:08:49.570 --> 01:08:51.940
Goshen was in her blood.
1361
01:08:51.940 --> 01:08:56.110
So I wanna make a toast right now to Goshen,
1362
01:08:56.110 --> 01:08:59.460
in honor of this historic roadside marker
1363
01:08:59.460 --> 01:09:02.250
that will be erected next to her house,
1364
01:09:02.250 --> 01:09:06.230
honoring that structure and those poems written therein,
1365
01:09:06.230 --> 01:09:08.124
and all the poems that will be written in.
1366
01:09:08.124 --> 01:09:10.870
[audience applause]
1367
01:09:10.870 --> 01:09:14.973
1368
01:09:16.798 --> 01:09:19.597 line:15%
We tore down the walls, so we can jack everything up.
1369
01:09:19.597 --> 01:09:21.270
\'Cause the house isn\'t level.
1370
01:09:21.270 --> 01:09:24.270
1371
01:09:24.270 --> 01:09:28.120
with really helpful sweetheart friends who come
1372
01:09:28.120 --> 01:09:31.920 line:15%
careening up the mountain and sleeping in the trailer
1373
01:09:31.920 --> 01:09:33.100
and on the porch.
1374
01:09:33.100 --> 01:09:34.974
1375
01:09:34.974 --> 01:09:36.651
we\'ll have some extra hands that can just help us,
1376
01:09:36.651 --> 01:09:37.484
there\'s so many little projects.
1377
01:09:37.484 --> 01:09:40.025
There\'s like chains holding up that beam.
1378
01:09:40.025 --> 01:09:41.122
[man laughs]
1379
01:09:41.122 --> 01:09:42.680
1380
01:09:42.680 --> 01:09:45.980
1381
01:09:45.980 --> 01:09:48.640
Yard work, just really simple things
1382
01:09:48.640 --> 01:09:52.100
that are hard for one person to do alone.
1383
01:09:52.100 --> 01:09:54.250
1384
01:09:54.250 --> 01:09:56.860 line:15%
He\'s the most competent man.
1385
01:09:56.860 --> 01:10:00.270
He\'s a pretty good poet, very good poet, I should say.
1386
01:10:00.270 --> 01:10:02.800
1387
01:10:02.800 --> 01:10:04.930
ever since grandma bought the house.
1388
01:10:04.930 --> 01:10:07.310
And like students and friends and colleagues
1389
01:10:07.310 --> 01:10:09.207
would show up and she\'d say,
1390
01:10:09.207 --> 01:10:10.690
\"the water\'s not working.\"
1391
01:10:10.690 --> 01:10:12.790
And they\'d be like, \"Well, alright
1392
01:10:12.790 --> 01:10:15.850
I\'m gonna try my hand seeing if I can help you!\"
1393
01:10:15.850 --> 01:10:17.690
1394
01:10:17.690 --> 01:10:20.010
that\'s more inclusive for other people.
1395
01:10:20.010 --> 01:10:23.490
1396
01:10:23.490 --> 01:10:25.483
like, commune style.
1397
01:10:26.400 --> 01:10:29.470 line:15%
1398
01:10:29.470 --> 01:10:32.070
through the whole thing, is so amazing.
1399
01:10:32.070 --> 01:10:34.643
1400
01:10:37.580 --> 01:10:39.990
1401
01:10:39.990 --> 01:10:43.340
And it\'s so cool, \'cause when we\'re here,
1402
01:10:43.340 --> 01:10:45.733
we see people stopping to read it.
1403
01:10:46.589 --> 01:10:49.150
And this side is a bio about who she is
1404
01:10:49.150 --> 01:10:52.310
and her contribution to the poetry world.
1405
01:10:52.310 --> 01:10:57.310
And then on the other side, we chose a poem, \"Green Apples.\"
1406
01:10:57.957 --> 01:11:01.240
\"In August, we carried the old horsehair mattress
1407
01:11:01.240 --> 01:11:05.420
to the back porch and slept with our children in a row
1408
01:11:05.420 --> 01:11:08.340
The wind came up the mountain into the orchard
1409
01:11:08.340 --> 01:11:12.090
telling me something: saying something urgent.
1410
01:11:12.090 --> 01:11:13.870
I was happy.
1411
01:11:13.870 --> 01:11:18.410
The green apples fell on the sloping roof and rattled down.
1412
01:11:18.410 --> 01:11:21.640
The wind was shaking me all night long,
1413
01:11:21.640 --> 01:11:25.870
shaking me in my sleep like a definition of love,
1414
01:11:25.870 --> 01:11:29.363
saying, this is the moment, here, now.
1415
01:11:30.489 --> 01:11:31.928 line:15%
1416
01:11:31.928 --> 01:11:33.261 line:15%
1417
01:11:34.664 --> 01:11:36.201 line:15%
1418
01:11:36.201 --> 01:11:38.090 line:15%
1419
01:11:38.090 --> 01:11:40.250
1420
01:11:40.250 --> 01:11:41.563
1421
01:11:42.750 --> 01:11:45.497
1422
01:11:47.716 --> 01:11:48.734
1423
01:11:48.734 --> 01:11:50.151
1424
01:11:51.155 --> 01:11:52.480
1425
01:11:52.480 --> 01:11:53.353
This is awesome.
1426
01:12:02.177 --> 01:12:04.040
1427
01:12:04.040 --> 01:12:04.873
Comin\' up!
1428
01:12:07.105 --> 01:12:08.465
1429
01:12:08.465 --> 01:12:09.974
My first time here.
1430
01:12:09.974 --> 01:12:13.549
[indistinct chatter]
1431
01:12:13.549 --> 01:12:15.164
1432
01:12:15.164 --> 01:12:16.173
Looks great.
1433
01:12:17.214 --> 01:12:18.250
[indistinct chatter]
1434
01:12:18.250 --> 01:12:20.060
1435
01:12:20.060 --> 01:12:21.359
1436
01:12:21.359 --> 01:12:23.377
1437
01:12:23.377 --> 01:12:24.810
We\'re here!
1438
01:12:24.810 --> 01:12:26.183
1439
01:12:27.220 --> 01:12:31.693
1440
01:12:32.695 --> 01:12:34.266
Our first one!
1441
01:12:34.266 --> 01:12:37.000
[all clapping]
1442
01:12:37.000 --> 01:12:37.930
Let\'s just jump right in,
1443
01:12:37.930 --> 01:12:39.900
because we\'ve got a lot of poems to read.
1444
01:12:39.900 --> 01:12:44.000
And we just had to bring in some
1445
01:12:44.000 --> 01:12:47.660
iconic Ruth Stone Goshen poems.
1446
01:12:47.660 --> 01:12:48.577
1447
01:12:48.577 --> 01:12:49.410
\"Then.
1448
01:12:50.380 --> 01:12:52.950 line:15%
That summer, from the back porch.
1449
01:12:52.950 --> 01:12:55.780 line:15%
we would hear the storm like a train,
1450
01:12:55.780 --> 01:12:58.720 line:15%
the Doppler effect compressing the air;
1451
01:12:58.720 --> 01:13:02.810
the rain, a heavy machine, coming up from below the orchard,
1452
01:13:02.810 --> 01:13:04.490
rushing towards us.
1453
01:13:04.490 --> 01:13:07.600
My trouble was I could not keep you dead.
1454
01:13:07.600 --> 01:13:10.100
You entered even the inanimate,
1455
01:13:10.100 --> 01:13:12.507
returning in endless guises.\"
1456
01:13:13.727 --> 01:13:16.990
1457
01:13:16.990 --> 01:13:19.610
There\'s no hidden agenda or anything.\"
1458
01:13:19.610 --> 01:13:20.710
I think I got that right, don\'t I?
1459
01:13:20.710 --> 01:13:22.170
1460
01:13:22.170 --> 01:13:24.620
1461
01:13:24.620 --> 01:13:27.793
to achieve this sort of simplicity in my poetry.
1462
01:13:28.919 --> 01:13:32.037
And it\'s actually so hard to do sometimes, you know?
1463
01:13:32.037 --> 01:13:33.557
\"Speculation.\"
1464
01:13:33.557 --> 01:13:35.690
\"In the coolness here I care not
1465
01:13:35.690 --> 01:13:38.100
for the down-pressed noises overhead.
1466
01:13:38.100 --> 01:13:41.910
I hear in my pearly bone the wear of marble under the rain;
1467
01:13:41.910 --> 01:13:44.040
nothing is truly dead,
1468
01:13:44.040 --> 01:13:47.190
At my center the bone glistens;
1469
01:13:47.190 --> 01:13:49.423
of wondrous bones I am made.
1470
01:13:53.990 --> 01:13:56.407
[soft music]
1471
01:13:58.060 --> 01:13:59.730
1472
01:13:59.730 --> 01:14:00.804
1473
01:14:00.804 --> 01:14:05.650
♪ I\'m just a child who grew to be 50 ♪
1474
01:14:05.650 --> 01:14:10.511
♪ And summer after summer came swiftly ♪
1475
01:14:10.511 --> 01:14:15.511
♪ I told my mom and dad I\'d make it home safely ♪
1476
01:14:16.075 --> 01:14:21.075
♪ Days of my heart, now what does my heart say ♪
1477
01:14:21.592 --> 01:14:26.592 line:15%
♪ And 50 summers swing around the sun in the blue sky ♪
1478
01:14:28.641 --> 01:14:32.180 line:15%
♪ Don\'t say that I didn\'t try ♪
1479
01:14:32.180 --> 01:14:35.813 line:15%
♪ I laugh and I cry ♪
1480
01:14:35.813 --> 01:14:38.454
[Ruth humming]
1481
01:14:38.454 --> 01:14:43.454
♪ Dancing child who never dances tomorrow ♪
1482
01:14:44.076 --> 01:14:48.119
♪ Where do the old children go ♪
1483
01:14:48.119 --> 01:14:51.536
♪ When time says goodbye ♪
1484
01:14:52.453 --> 01:14:55.120
[upbeat music]
1485
01:15:13.058 --> 01:15:18.058
♪ I can\'t recreate the wind ♪
1486
01:15:19.228 --> 01:15:24.228
♪ Blows cold and clear on the green mountains ♪
1487
01:15:24.318 --> 01:15:29.318
♪ And this old house I live in isn\'t haunted ♪
1488
01:15:31.065 --> 01:15:36.065
♪ That\'s all that I ever really wanted ♪
1489
01:15:40.158 --> 01:15:45.158
♪ This winter\'s killing me ♪
1490
01:15:46.596 --> 01:15:51.596
♪ This winter\'s killing me ♪
1491
01:15:52.689 --> 01:15:57.689
♪ I work all the time, and every bone bends ♪
1492
01:15:59.037 --> 01:16:04.037
♪ I make good money, I can\'t savor its end ♪
1493
01:16:08.457 --> 01:16:13.457
♪ This winter\'s killing me ♪
1494
01:16:14.704 --> 01:16:16.871
♪ No more ♪
Distributor: Icarus Films
Length: 77 minutes
Date: 2022
Genre: Expository
Language: English
Color/BW:
Closed Captioning: Available
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