Briefs Poetry brings joy for National Book Award winner
Stone’s sense of joy as poets awards over a career in which read aloud is visibly apparent as she has published eight books of she leans close poetry. In Among the students between to catch every November 2002, For National Book Award the buildings, word. It’s as if she won the the color of their clothes is a winner Ruth Stone, poetry has she wants to National Book mirage of tulips. always been a major part of life. experience the Award for poetry The lash of hot and cold upstate Her mother read Tennyson to words physifor In the Next New York mountain weather: her as a baby. Her typesetter cally. The room Galaxy (her most Poet Ruth Stone works with doctoral April splinters like an ice palace. father printed copies of her becomes a sort recent collecstudent Anne Rashid. — (from “Visions from My Office poems and left them on the of confessional tion) and, in Window” in In the Next Galaxy) kitchen table for 5-year-old Ruth as raw emotion December, the generation. Failing eyesight — to find. It helped her through the progressive macular degenerais shared. Wallace Stevens pain following her husband’s “Every year, I keep thinking it Prize from the Academy of tion — forced her retirement suicide and her struggle to raise can’t get any better,” Stone said. American Poets. from Binghamton University in three young daughters alone. “But it does. I love the exchange, “Out of all the teachers I’ve December 2000, but she And at 87, Stone still figures the play back and forth. It’s a had in creative writing, Ruth has continues to teach a two-week she’s got a lot left to say and rare pleasure.” pulled the most out of me,” said short course that has become a even more to share with the next mecca for budding poets. Stone has won countless doctoral student Anne Rashid, who has taken Stone’s workshop three times. “She has a way of have occupied the sites and which group could opening herself up that makes A respectful return be affiliated with the items,” said PAF director everyone comfortable. She’s Nina Versaggi. Archaeology center works with Iroquois taught me that you have to dig Rick Hill, chairperson of the Haudenosaunee to repatriate burial remains deep to find art in unexpected Standing Committee, commended the University places — places that sometimes fter years in specimen boxes and for its role in the process. “We were impressed by can be very painful.” laboratories, burial goods and remains the quality of the information that was shared of the indigenous people who once inhabited and the spirit in which that information was the region will soon come to rest among their shared,” he said. “There was mutual respect modern-day descendants. among all parties.” Guided by cultural icons and geography, PAF received a National Park Service representatives of the Iroquois Confederacy are grant to complete the inventory, which working with University archaeologists to consists mainly of small items, determine the cultural heritage of the Native including human remains and shell American burial goods and develop a plan for beads from six or seven sites, and a Professor Ali Mazrui (left) greets former their repatriation and burial. large collection of remains salvaged Nigerian President Yakubu Gowon. Collected during excavation and highway from the Englebert Site in Nichols. building projects from Delaware to Chemung The Englebert Site is a large Diplomats, government counties over the last 40 years, the remains have graveyard uncovered in the leaders recognize Mazrui been in the care of BU’s Public Archaeology early days of archaeology in Facility and the Anthropology Department. the Southern Tier, during More than 240 guests, Following provisions of the National Graves construction of Route 17. including a former head of state Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, PAF is When the formal and diplomats from around the coordinating the effort to return the items to repatriation occurs, world, celebrated the scholastic the appropriate descendants. After documentrepresentatives from the tribes legacy of Ali A. Mazrui, ing the collection and assigning preliminary — perhaps accompanied by their Schweitzer Chair in the Humanicultural affiliations, PAF officials met with the clan mothers and faith keepers — ties and director of the Institute Haudenosaunee Standing Committee, which will accept the remains and of Global Cultural Studies, oversees burials and regulations. other items. It’s most likely they during a two-day symposium “The consultation allowed us to come will return the goods to areas as this spring to celebrate his together to determine whose ancestors might close as possible to where they were found. scholarship and life’s work. The symposium featured a series of
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Binghamton University BINGHAMTON RESEARCH 2003