Deborah Dashow Ruth
Poet and Playwright
Kensington, CA
Joyridin
Poetry
" . . . the singing of language itself, without melody." -- Sharon Olds (interviewed on "Fresh Air," National Public Radio, 1988.
Deborah Dashow Ruth, originally from Chicago, is a poet and playwright who lives in Kensington, California. A frequent participant in the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Dashow Ruth is also a patron of both the San Francisco Bay Area’s literary and theatre communities.
From Peggy Sapphire, editor of Disenfranchised Grieving, January 10, 2016:
"An honor to have your extraordinary poetry collection! Thank you very much for sending it. . . . Your poems are so fine -- courageous, honest."
joyriding on an updraft
When Deborah Dashow Ruth writes in her poem “Gardening,” that Fingers tease new growth / from the soil beneath the soil / where dormant life waits / to be coaxed into my world, she could be commenting on her special creative process.
All experiences, relationships, memories are culled in Joyriding on an Updraft for the pleasure of bringing them into articulate focus. The reader is the beneficiary of these moments recollected — not so much in tranquility — as in sound-play and scene-setting. It is not surprising that Ruth also writes plays and fiction.
She has the dramatist’s gift for finding the moments that transpire within childhood, family, sexual relationships, and social situations, and then bringing them into small dramas augmented by the sounds of aptly chosen words. - from back cover of Joyriding on an Updraft
Al Young, photo by Joseph Robinson.
Al Young, former California State Poet Laureate, writes:
“Deborah Dashow Ruth’s poetry — always apple-crisp, sometimes gingerbitter (spiced with lime) — slips out to explore cracks in every sky, sea, desert and plain of our physical, familial and psychic worlds. Like vulnerable kites, these poems fly wayward, fly wild, fly into the heart.”
Joyriding on an updraft -- ordering information
You can order Joyriding on an Updraft directly from the publisher, Sugartown Publishing, at http://sugartownpublishing.com using a credit card through PayPal. Or, you can order using a check by writing to the publisher, at:
Sugartown Publishing
1164 Solano Ave., #140
Albany, CA 94706
Contact the publisher about ordering multiple copies or making other arrangements: janniedres@att.net.
Deborah Dashow Ruth with Galway Kinnell.
MIDWIFE
For Galway Kinnell
Conception occurred
before I met you,
but you were present
when the pains began.
You coached me with patience and skill,
urged me along with such assurance
that I could go off and spend
the long night laboring alone.
I struggled with what wanted to be born.
When the morning broke
and brought a crowning,
I wrapped the newborn in fresh paper,
and you were the one who welcomed into
the world my first-begotten
poem.
Joyriding on an Updraft chronicles a life in poetry spent very much in the spirit of its title. Deborah Dashow Ruth has been steadfastly paying attention, catching poems as they come in all manner of guises, holding on for the ride, and expecting joy.
— Dan Bellm, Practice
Deborah Dashow Ruth, a long-time supporter of the poetry and theatre communities in the Bay Area, reveals a voice both playful and bemused in this retrospective collection. In the title poem, “From the Bluff at Fort Worden,” fresh similes delight: “clouds like giant grapes” and “swallows like a random toss of jacks . . . that swoop and jink.” In my other favorite poem, “Division of Labor,” the short blunt lines fit the clipped and spare nature of the bleak conversation, or lack thereof, between husband and wife. The poet revisits the moments of her life with humor, nostalgia, and insight.
— Gail Entrekin, Rearrangement of the Invisible, editor of Canary
Deborah Dashow Ruth’s first full-length book of poetry spans fifty years of a life well-lived, and well written about. Her poems show a mastery of styles, from free verse to villanelles, sonnets to concrete poetry. Dashow Ruth’s poems show that a life does not have to be fraught with trauma to be meaningful to the reader.
— Margo Solad, Some Very Soft Days
Joyriding on an Updraft leads you through musings, worries, denials, and wonderment about mother, father, brothers, husbands, strangers, famous poets, lovers, sex, cats, mock– ingbirds, and the craft of poetry — weaving in tidbits of advice (“Save your sad news until tomorrow”) and reminders of mortality (“Memento Mori”) that will resonate long after . . .
— Marianne Betterly
Kensington, CA
Joyridin