Second-Hand Coat: Poems New and Selected

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.