"An aging poet's failing eyesight informs this collection . . . some of which recall the spirit of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. Dark but not hopeless, they spring from Stone's lucid inner vision, which is straightforward, musical, and defiant."--Utne Now available in paperback,In the Dark, winner of the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement, is Ruth Stone's follow-up to her National Book Award--winningIn the Next Galaxy. Personal issues of memory, aging, and loss are balanced against profound political and cultural change. Stone has been called a "people's poet" whose work is "profoundly rewarding," and she writes a poetry of everyday life that recasts the mundane as indispensable. When asked whether poets improve with age, Stone, then eighty-nine, replied: "There's no question." From "What is a Poem?": Having come this far with a handful of alphabet, I am forced, with these few blocks, to invent the universe.