Best of: Film documents life, work of award-winning female poet
Ruth Stone lived to the age of 96 before dying in her home in Goshen, Vermont, which is now on the National Register of Historic Places. Ruth Stone Trust
The poet Wallace Stevens once wrote "A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman." Some years later, another poet, Ruth Stone, deconstructed that idea in her own poem, called, quite simply, “Words.” She said: “I can never know what a man sees when he looks at a woman. That is a sealed universe.” Ruth Stone’s path in life took her through the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she attended college. She went on to become an accomplished poet despite the many obstacles she faced. She was a woman in the mid 20th century in a world of poetry that was still dominated by men, and she had to raise three daughters on her own after her second husband, Walter, died by suicide.
A documentary that examines her life and work will be airing tonight on WILL-TV and is available to stream on the PBS website through the end of April. The 21st Show was joined by the documentary's filmmaker.
This conversation originally aired March 21, 2023.
GUEST:
Nora Jacobson
Filmmaker, “Ruth Stone's Vast Library of the Female Mind,” Off the Grid Productions
Prepared for web by Owen Henderson
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