by Dorianne Laux
Dorianne Laux discusses Ruth Stone
“Ruth Stone invites us into her personal universe using the language and images of her particular life.”
Today, I’m thinking about Ruth Stone and how she’s able to say so much in a few lines. Ruth Stone was born in 1915 and won the National Book Award in 2002, when she was 87 years old. Her poem “Pokeberries” appears in What Love Comes To, published in her 92nd year by Copper Canyon Press.
Pokeberries
I started out in the Virginia mountains
with my grandma’s pansy bed
and my Aunt Maud’s dandelion wine.
We lived on greens and back-fat and biscuits.
My Aunt Maud scrubbed right through the linoleum.
My daddy was a northerner who played drums
and chewed tobacco and gambled.
He married my mama on the rebound.
Who would want an ignorant hill girl with red hair?
They took a Pullman up to Indianapolis
and someone stole my daddy’s wallet.
My whole life has been stained with pokeberries.
No man seemed right for me. I was awkward
until I found a good wood-burning stove.
There is no use asking what it means.
With my first piece of ready cash I bought my own
place in Vermont; kerosene lamps, dirt road.
I’m sticking here like a porcupine up a tree.
Like the one our neighbor shot. Its bones and skin
hung there for three years in the orchard.
No amount of knowledge can shake my grandma out of me;
or my Aunt Maud; or my mama, who didn’t just bite an apple
with her big white teeth. She split it in two.
This poem could only have been written by Ruth Stone. Her voice is clear, singular, unmistakable, the details so particular that it’s difficult to imagine how it could strike such a universal chord. Look at the specificity of Stone’s personal universe: Virginia, Vermont, Indianapolis. Pansies and dandelion wine. Greens, back-fat and linoleum. Pullmans and kerosene. She also uses phrases and colloquialisms particular to her time and place: “I started out,” “ready cash,” “like a porcupine up a tree.”
Somehow Stone manages to take us through an entire lifetime in a mere 23 lines, choosing carefully from among her many memories to give us a family portrait, a community portrait and a self-portrait. Stone creates this sense of self through the details and images she chooses to highlight. The Virginia Mountains in the first line give us a sense of the grandeur of place, but moves quickly to the bed of grandmother’s common pansies and Aunt Maud, who makes wine out of weeds.
Stone continues in this vein, concentrating on the qualities of simplicity and stubbornness in the women she’s come from. Her father’s hands contribute a sense of risk and wildness, which merges with her mother’s “ignorance” and fiery red hair. The money her father loses seems to be Stone’s gain as she saves what she earns and buys a house, moves away from the family and community that raised her, and makes a place for her own life.
But in spite of uprooting herself from her rural past, gaining a more worldly education and becoming a poet, the last line confirms the deep connections that remain as Stone remembers and honors her lineage, that stubborn willfulness and inborn strength that has been passed down to her on a genetic level, an animal level, in the form of her mother’s hard, horse-like teeth.
Ruth Stone invites us into her personal universe using the language and images of her particular life. Choose 20 words that describe your personal universe, and be sure to include the five senses. Use concrete words that represent the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touches of your life. Represent your past in the first eight words, your present in the next eight words and your future self in the remaining four words.
Make sure you maintain distillation. Not a tree, but an elm or a maple. Not shoes, but platforms, leather work boots or scuffed flats. Include both sides of the self: light and dark.
Stone’s poems are filled with life and movement. Choose a word of movement. Then find an abstraction, a word you might use to define what most motivates or controls your life. For Ruth Stone, it might be stubbornness. What is it for you? Joy, guilt, fear, love, shame, pride, anger, regret?
And last, choose a few words drawn from these categories: seasons, times of day or night, astrological signs, totems, heroes and heroines, nicknames, places in the universe, invented words or sounds, snippets of dialog. Use this list to write a 23-line autobiographical poem, or a poem about one of your heroes, using the words you’ve chosen. Make the title of the poem your abstract word.
A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Laux’s fourth book of poems, Facts About the Moon (W.W. Norton), is the recipient of the Oregon Book Award, chosen by Ai. It was also short-listed for the 2006 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for the most outstanding book of poems published in the United States and chosen by The Kansas City Star as a noteworthy book of 2005. Laux is also author of three collections of poetry from BOA Editions, Awake (1990) introduced by Philip Levine, recently reprinted by Eastern Washington University Press, What We Carry (1994) and Smoke (2000). Superman: The Chapbook was released by Red Dragonfly Press in January 2008.
Note: Read more about Laux’s thoughts on poetry in the Read Write Interview Dana Guthrie Martin conducted with Laux last year.
“Pokeberries” shared with permission from Copper Canyon Press. Order What Love Comes To from Copper Canyon.
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This prompt is absolutely incredible. I love the Stone poem and the focus on getting a few specific words on which to build your poem.
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Wonderful poem.The last three lines I can really relate to.I also understand about the good wood burning stove.It can be the epiphany in a country woman’s life.
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And I meant to add ‘and any other woman’s life.’
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This is an amazing prompt (and an even more amazing poem, and all the guidance was much appreciated, and made it all the more challenging. I can’t wait to get my hands on more of her poetry. Simply wonderful.
I will truly enjoy working on this…
and I’m loving the new look and feel of the site!!!! Great job ya all!
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Oooh, I’m definitely going to steal this prompt idea to use with my poetry-writing students!
I just registered and am liking what I see so far! Great work!
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Is there a broken link to Dana’s interview with Dorianne? I can’t get there.
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Hysperia, the link was incorrect. I fixed it. Thanks for pointing that out!
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garlinjake, please *do* steal it. We would love to see what your students to with the prompt.
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Whew! Thx for that link Dana – great interview, wonderful poet. I’ll be off to find her work now …
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Dana Guthrie Martin replied:
August 1st, 2009 at 7:41 am
Elizabeth, her work is great. I remember when I read What We Carry and the impression it made on me.
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Definitely the best prompt I’ve come across. I had the good fortune of working with this prompt in one of Dorianne’s workshops, and I now use it with my own students. Many of them have never written a poem, and this prompt often yields surprising results. I’m fairly certain the best poem I ever wrote was written using this prompt. And wow…this Ruth Stone poem is fantastic. The last line is so unexpected and so absolutely perfect. Time to check out some more Ruth Stone, methinks.
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Dana Guthrie Martin replied:
August 1st, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Kelsie, the bar for poetry writing prompts is set really high now, isn’t it?
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[...] been up all night, disagreeing with my deamons. I was intending to spin out a poem to a prompt on the ReadWritePoem site. It is a somewhat convoluted prompt, but the object’s simple: to write 23 lines of [...]
the specifics in the prompt are what make it a challenge. and proof that good poems come from hard work. lots and lots of hard work.
wow! can’t wait to see what everyone gets this week.
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Hmm. I don’t know how comfortable I am with this one lol. I like the essence and wordplay, that is doable in flow and will prove to be a fun challenge.
Don’t mind me…I’m a rebel at structure lol
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yes, carolee. hard work. that’s the stuff of great poetry. you are so right.
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Wow….great prompt…but this will be a real challenge for me.
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ps…..like Bobbie….I am a rebel at structure also
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An inspiring poet and poem, a prompt I can only say makes me feel the way I did decades (decades) ago on Christmas eve – that lost, rare feeling of intense anticipation. Can’t wait to get started. Thank you.
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I came in to the comments to see if anyone else is finding this one a challenge. I feel both reassured and encouraged.
Back to the page.
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This was hard. Educational.
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Thankyou for that interview with Dorianne Laux It’s really worth reading.I agree with all her opinions about poetry. So much new poetry to read as well.This site is becoming addictive..my house is standing on its ear at the moment.
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