William Stafford*

William Stafford (1914 —1993) is a prolific American poet whose first poetry collection appeared when he was 46 years old. Two years later his Traveling Through the Dark (1962) won the National Book Award. His poetry is characterized by a simple accessible style ― understated, restrained, and unforced. His work often investigates the relationship between humanity and the natural world.

He was a disciplined writer who didn’t think anyone need experience writer’s block. He said, “A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.”

He was a pacifist who was part of the small Christian denomination the Church of the Brethren. One of his collections Scripture of Leaves was published through the Brethren, and although he taught for most of his career at Lewis & Clark College in Oregon, he did teach for one year at their Indiana school, Manchester College.

Assurance

You will never be alone, you hear so deep
a sound when autumn comes. Yellow
pulls across the hills and thrums,
or the silence after lightning before it says
its names― and then the clouds' wide-mouthed
apologies. You were aimed from birth:
you will never be alone. Rain
will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,
long aisles― you never heard so deep a sound,
moss on rock, and years. You turn your head―
that's what the silence meant: you're not alone.
The whole wide world pours down.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about William Stafford : first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.

William Stafford

William Stafford (1914 —1993) was a conscientious objector during World War II. At that time he worked in an alternate forest service work camp, operated by the Church of the Brethren. While doing this work in California, he met and married his wife, Dorothy, the daughter of a minister in that denomination. He later spent one year teaching at a college associated with the Church of the Brethren, although the balance of his teaching career was at Lewis & Clark College in Oregon.

Poet Donald Hall compares Stafford to other poets of his generation — many of whom were also conscientious objectors, and many of whom died too young. Hall says, “But Stafford is a low-church Christian far from the rhetorical Catholicism that Lowell and Berryman entertained. I suspect that his survival is related not merely to his Christianity but to his membership in a small, embattled, pacifist sect.”

The following comes from a poem, which Stafford wrote on the day he died:

------You can't tell when strange things with meaning
------will happen. I'm [still] here writing it down
------just the way it was.

------"You don't have to prove anything,"
------my mother said. "Just be ready
------for what God sends."
------I listened and put my hand
------out in the sun again. It was all easy.

In 1963, when he was 48, he won the National Book Award for Traveling Through the Dark — his first major poetry collection. Despite this late start, he eventually published 57 poetry books. In 1970 he was appointed to the role that would later become known as Poet Laureate of the United States, and in 1980 he was named Poet Laureate of Oregon.

Easter Morning

Maybe someone comes to the door and says,
"Repent," and you say, "Come on in," and it's
Jesus. That's when all you ever did, or said,
or even thought, suddenly wakes up again and
sings out, "I'm still here," and you know it's true.
You just shiver alive and are left standing
there suddenly brought to account: saved.

Except, maybe that someone says, "I've got a deal
for you." And you listen, because that's how
you're trained—they told you, "Always hear both sides."
So then the slick voice can sell you anything, even
Hell, which is what you're getting by listening.
Well, what should you do? I'd say always go to
the door, yes, but keep the screen locked. Then,
while you hold the Bible in one hand, lean forward
and say carefully, "Jesus?"

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about William Stafford : second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca