Second-Hand Coat: Poems New and Selected [Hardcover]

Ruth Stone (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0879236795 | ISBN-13: 978-0879236793 | Publication Date: October 1987 | Edition: 1st

This collection, with 45 new poems, chronicles the work of a voice swept by loss, love, the facts of nature, and the curse of the literary life. This reprint was first published by David Godine in 1987.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Ruth Stone's work is dazzling, original, fearless, funny, and deeply moving." -- Sharon Olds

An Academic Life
Advice
American Milk
And Yet
At The Center
Bazook
Behind The Fascade
Being A Woman
Being Human
Between The Lines
Body Among Trees
The Burned Bridge
Cheap
Cocks And Mares
Codicil
Comments Of The Mild
Communion
Curtains
Denouement
Disappeared Child
Dream Of Light In The Shade
Dream Of Wild Birds
Drought In The Lower Fields
Eclat
Emily
End Of Summer ... 1969
The Excuse
Fading
Family
Father's Day
From The Arboretum
From The Other Side
Green Apples
Habit
Habitat
Happiness
Haying
How Aunt Maud Took To Being A Woman
How To Catch Aunt Harriette
I Have Three Daughters
Icons From Indianapolis
Illinois
In An Iridescent Time
The Infant
It
Laguna Beach
A Last Cloud
The Latest Hotel Guest Walks Over Particles That Revolve
Liesbeslied
Loss
Love's Relative
The Magnet
Memory Of Knowledge And Death At The Mother Of Scholars
Message From Your Toes
Metamorphosis
Mine
The Miracle
The Mold
A Mother Looks At Her Child
Mother's Picture
Moving Right Along (2)
Names
The Nose
An Old Song
Orange Poem Praising Brown
Orchard
Out Of Los Angeles
Overlapping Edges
Periphery
Pine Cones
The Plan
Poetry
Pokeberries
Poles
The Principle Of Mirrors
Procedure
The Room
Salt
Scars
The Season
Seat Belt Fastened
Second-hand Coat
Separate
Shadows
Shotgun Wedding
Snow Trivia
Some Things You'll Need To Know Before You Join The Union
Something
Something Deeper
The Song Of Absinthe Granny
The Splinter
The Story Of The Churn
Sunday
Surviving In Earlysville With A Broken Window
The Talking Fish
Tenacity
Topography
Translations
The Tree
Turn Your Eyes Away
Turning
U Of My
Vegetables I
Vegetables Ii
Vernal Equinox
What Can You Do
When The Furnace Goes On In A Californian Tract House
Where I Came From
Why Kid Yourself
Winter
Women Laughing
Years Later My Eyes Clear Up
You May Ask
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Ruth Stone says of her work, My poems are a release, a laughing at the ridiculous, and songs of mourning, celebrating marriage and loss and all the sad baggage of our lives. Her unique blend of form and content, which is as responsive to marriage, family, and human solitude as to animals, landscapes and seasons, deserves to be included in every contemporary poetry survey course taught today. She has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, and her poems have been included in over 20 anthologies. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 131 pages
• Publisher: David R Godine Pub; 1st edition (October 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879236795
• ISBN-13: 978-0879236793
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,568,449 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars touchstone, May 6, 2002

By 

Andrea Boykowycz "b-wycz" (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Second-Hand Coat: Poems New and Selected (Hardcover)

I heard Ruth Stone read from this book back in 1988, an event sponsored by the International Poetry Forum in Pittsburgh, PA. I screwed together all my teenaged courage at the reception afterwards to approach her and say, "I just wanted to let you know, I loved your poems when I read them, and you look exactly as I'd thought you'd look, and your voice sounds exactly as I'd thought it would sound." And she stood up and gave me a hug.

The 'new' poems in this collection are not many, but they're really excellent; and the selections from her previous books (Cheap, Topography, and In an Iridescent Time) are the best poems of those collections. These are tremendously lucid and humble - not to say ordinary or spare - poems about aging and loss, but also about tenacity and determined hopefulness. Nothing I write here can do them justice! This is one of my very favorite books, and if you can find a copy I highly recommend you seize hold of it with both hands and not let go.