LAND O' GOSHEN:

Vermonter Ruth Stone Wins for Poetry (AP, 11/21/02)

A Goshen poet has won the National Book Award in poetry.

Ruth Stone said beforehand she was "profoundly dumbfounded" to be a finalist for the award, which was announced Wednesday in New York.

Stone, 87, won for her collection, In the Next Galaxy, her eighth volume of poetry. Many of the poems are, in her words, "love poems to a dead man," her late husband, Walter Stone.

"I think you probably gave it to me because I'm old," Stone said with a laugh at the New York awards ceremony.

Here's one of her poems:

Male Gorillas

At the doughnut shop
twenty-three silverbacks
are lined up at the bar,
sitting on the stools.
It's morning coffee and trash day.
The waitress has a heavy feeling face,
considerate with carmine lipstick.
She doesn't brown my fries.
I have to stand at the counter
and insist on my order.
I take my cup of coffee to a small
inoffensive table along the wall.
At the counter the male chorus line
is lined up tight.
I look at their almost identical butts;
their buddy hunched shoulders,
the curve of their ancient spines.
They are methodically browsing
in their own territory.
This data goes into that vast
confused library, the female mind.

Is she saying men are apelike?
Posted by Orrin Judd at November 22, 2002 7:09 PM