Who was Ruth Stone? It’s a deceptively easy question. Ruth Stone (1915-2011) was an American poet who earned numerous accolades throughout her career, such as the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1999 and National Book Award in 2002 — also having been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2009. She was also a poetry professor in Binghamton University’s creative writing department. But who really was Ruth Stone? That was the question that the Literary Legacies event, held in Stone’s honor on Oct. 15 at the BU Art Museum, planned to shed some light on.

James McDermott, a graduate student and assistant to the director of the creative writing department, spoke about why Ruth was chosen to be featured over other potential candidates.

“There’s a certain kind of plain-spoken quality to her poetry that can sometimes seem like simplicity at first,” McDermott said. “Or — it is a kind of simplicity, but a simplicity that has something deeper and more complex roiling beneath the surface.”

The Literary Legacies event kicked off with remarks from Tina Chang, the director of BU’s creative writing department and a former student of Ruth’s herself. She described Ruth in vivid words.

“A force [who] lived her life in an uncompromising fashion, completely immersed in words and their power,” Chang said.

This sentiment of Stone’s dedication to writing would be echoed by other speakers as well, such as Jane Alberdeston, a visiting lecturer at BU. Alberdeston described her experience with Stone in 2003.

“[I was] lucky enough to be included in the small group of writers who sat in the Creative Writing Lounge in Library North, in the comfort of Ruth Stone’s warm company,” Alberdeston said. “She gave herself completely to us.”

The speakers that day — Chang, Alberdeston, Joe Weil, an associate professor in English, and Bianca Stone, Ruth’s granddaughter — all delivered sincere and compassionate speeches about Stone, also masterfully reciting some of her poetry. In particular, Bianca Stone had some beautiful insights into the memory of her late grandmother. She remarked on the almost spooky feeling the campus gave her, feeling the presence of Ruth’s influence all around. Bianca Stone finished her speech with a quote from one of Ruth’s poems titled “Being Human” — “I do not doubt all things are possible / Even that wildest hope that we may meet beyond the grave.”

Following the speeches and a short intermission for food and drinks was the main event for the day, a showing of the documentary “Ruth Stone’s Vast Library of the Female Mind,” which was the reason behind the creation of the Literary Legacies event.

“Nora Jacobson, the film’s director, wrote to the English department to announce that the film would be released last year,” Chang said. “We were thrilled to screen the film but due to [COVID-19], we postponed the event because we wanted to have an in-person event. Having a live audience for the screenings felt important. Since Ruth Stone was my poetry professor, I have a deep fondness for her life and spirit and I was excited to bring her work to our students.”

The documentary followed Stone and her family both throughout different points of her life and after her death. It covered her life story, grief after the loss of her husband Walter Stone, how her experiences shaped her poetry and the hurdles she had faced in order for her work to be taken seriously in a male-dominated field.

“Ruth’s poems were seen by major publishers as ‘women’s poetry,’” Alberdeston said. “The complex simplicity of her poems stretch across the human experience. They populate poverty, rejection, trauma, loss, illness, grief. Her poems ride a bus. They shop at thrift stores and have only one old stove to heat an entire house. How is that women’s poetry?”

Alberdeston continued to discuss how the documentary impacted her.

“I did not expect the film ‘Ruth Stone’s Vast Library of the Female Mind’ to affect me quite the way it did,” Alberdeston said. “I was completely floored, seeing not only Ruth Stone on screen at different ages and stages of her life, but also seeing her friends, who are also amazing poets and teachers, talk about how much they love Ruth. Seeing them all talk about their relationship with Stone brought me to tears.”

After the screening of the documentary, a short Q&A session was held with Bianca Stone, Jacobson — the film’s director — and Joel Gardner — the son of John Garder, who had been honored in the previous day’s event. The group touched on some behind-the-scenes aspects of what went into creating the documentary. They also talked about the reasons behind its creation, which included the hope for Ruth and her work to continue to survive even after her passing.

So, who was Ruth Stone? An American poet, yes. A widely respected and awarded one at that as well. A professor, too. But she was also so much more. Former students of hers spoke of her not just as a professor, but as a friend. As someone who looked at them and saw something more. Someone who gave all of her being into writing.

“What did Stone, like [Maria Mazziotti] Gillan and all great writers who are also teachers, offer?” Alberdeston said. “She was herself. She spoke to us plainly — she spoke of fear and truth, her corner of Vermont, her awful loss. And within that honesty, there was craft.”

She was a mother and a grandmother. She was a widow. Stone was a woman who contained multitudes inside of her. And while it is impossible to understand every facet of her, the Literary Legacies event helped give an incredible insight into such a fascinating figure.