American poet and author known for In the Next Galaxy, What Love Comes To, and other poetry collections. She received the 2002 National Book Award for poetry and was a 2009 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
She was born in Roanoke, Virginia and traveled all over the United States as a creative writing professor.
She became Vermont Poet Laureate in 2002.
She married Walter Stone. After her husband committed suicide in 1959, she raised her three children alone.
She was acquainted with Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert .
