In the Next Galaxy

In the Next Galaxy is the eighth book of poems by Ruth Stone, an American poet born in Virginia in 1915 who published it when she was well into her eighties. Written in a plainspoken, often wry voice, the poems carry heavy subjects lightly. Stone looks back on a love long lost, on years of hardship and poverty and on the passing of time, and she writes with unflinching clarity about growing old in a body and mind she still fully inhabits. Ordinary things in the natural world, such as crows, gnats and apple trees, become occasions for sharp observation and sudden insight. Some poems also bear witness to injustice and to the lives of people pushed to the margins. Brief, direct and frequently funny, the poems reward readers who enjoy storytelling in verse and the perspective of a long life. The book won the 2002 National Book Award for Poetry.