In part, Stone's poem is an exploration of the expectations and disappointments of marriage in the 1950s. In The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (2000), Stephanie Coontz argues against representations of the 1950s American family as wholesome and virtuous, claiming that notions of traditional family values are rooted more in myth than fact.

Stone's first collection, In an Iridescent Time (1959), focuses on Stone's childhood family life.

Stone won the National Book Award for poetry in 2002 for In the Next Galaxy, published by Copper Canyon Press.

John Updike's novel Rabbit, Run (1960) follows the life of Harry Angstrom, a former star basketball player in high school, who is now in his midtwenties, struggling in an unfulfilling marriage. Updike's (male) representation of marriage in the 1950s is a useful counterpoint to Stone's representation of marriage during that era.