SOURCE: Wakowski, Diane. “The Comedic Art of Ruth Stone.” In The House Is Made of Poetry: The Art of Ruth Stone, edited by Wendy Barker and Sandra M. Gilbert, pp. 101-05. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996.

In the following essay, the American poet Diane Wakowski compares the comedy of Stone's poetry to that of Dante, arguing that Stone is, above all else, a comedic poet who uses wit and irony in the service of comedy rather than satire.

Dante called his great poem La Commedia (only later did he add the word “divine”) because “in the conclusion it is prosperous, pleasant, and desirable” and in its style “lax and unpretending,” being “written in the vulgar tongue, in which women and children speak” (OED [Oxford English Dictionary] 475). Comedy, by the Middle Ages, had become a play with a happy ending. Yet anyone who studies comedy knows that while...