William Stafford
William Stafford was a prominent American poet known for his accessible and impactful poetry, which gained recognition during a time when poetry was often overlooked. Born in 1914, he received his education at the University of Kansas and later served as a conscientious objector during World War II, experiences that influenced his writing. Stafford taught at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon for many years, focusing on Romantic poetry but not offering formal creative writing courses. His notable collections include "Traveling Through the Dark," which won the National Book Award for poetry in 1962, and he is celebrated for poems that reflect on common experiences rather than traditional heroic narratives.
His writing style is characterized by mundane diction, a conversational tone, and a focus on everyday life, which invites readers to perceive familiar subjects from new perspectives. Stafford's work often explores themes of nostalgia and connection to place, making him relatable to a wide audience. His ability to capture the essence of ordinary experiences has solidified his position as a beloved figure in American poetry. Collections like "The Darkness Around Us Is Deep" offer a curated selection of his poetry, highlighting his unique voice and vision.
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William Stafford
American poet
- Born: January 17, 1914
- Birthplace: Hutchinson, Kansas
- Died: August 28, 1993
- Place of death: Lake Oswego, Oregon
Biography
William Stafford was one of the most prolific and best-loved of American poets in an age when it is often said that hardly anyone reads poetry, that more people write it than read it, and that there are no “major” American poets. After receiving his B.A. at the University of Kansas in 1937, Stafford acted as a conscientious objector during World War II in Arkansas, Illinois, and California, then returned to Kansas to complete his master’s degree in 1946. Down in My Heart, the memoir of his experiences as a conscientious objector, includes a half dozen of his earliest published poems. He taught at Lewis and Clark College near Portland, Oregon, for two years before attending the University of Iowa, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1954. After brief teaching stints elsewhere, he returned to Lewis and Clark, where he taught from 1956 until his retirement in 1980. His specialty was Romantic poetry; although he taught short-term workshops in poetry writing elsewhere, he did not teach creative writing at Lewis and Clark.
In “Mountain Conscription,” a poem included in Down in My Heart, Stafford portrays himself standing “suddenly alone” in “small shoes upon the sand,” hearing “the end of things,” and “not knowing what to say.” The ambiguous “they” tell him that nostalgia is “a feeling men have” and that he “will know it, later,” all of his life. Although no admirer of Stafford’s poems would likely cite that poem as one of his best, it captures much of his vision and of the image he portrays of himself. Critics, scholars, and fellow poets described Stafford as quietistic, tentative, passive, Indian-like, Quaker-like, low-key, congenial, pastoral, nostalgic, regional, and paternal (but not “patriarchal”).
Stafford was interviewed frequently, and he wrote extensively about his practices as a poet. In Writing the Australian Crawl he defines poetry as “the kind of thing you have to see from the corner of your eye,” and in You Must Revise Your Life he writes, “A poem is a lucky piece of talk.” Throughout Stafford’s work one may detect a somewhat oblique angle on life.
Stafford’s second collection, Traveling Through the Dark, gained him broad recognition when it won the National Book Award for poetry in 1962, and the title poem has been widely anthologized. In this collection, Stafford speaks for the random people of the world, including himself, as opposed to the heroes or notorious villains. Stafford’s third book of poems, The Rescued Year, includes “Fifteen,” a poem frequently anthologized in secondary school texts, and “Passing Remark,” which opens with a terse couplet that some readers regard as indicative of both his own reticence and the understated nature of his poems: “In scenery I like flat country./ In life I don’t like much to happen.” Yet things do happen in Stafford’s poems, and in “The Animal That Drank Up Sound” he offers a narrative poem of nearly fifty lines after the fashion of Native American myth.
In Allegiances, Stafford ranges freely from Kansas to Oregon, and his family continues to figure prominently. As he says in the opening line of the title poem, “It is time for all the heroes to go home.” He aligns himself with “us common ones” who “locate ourselves by the real things/ we live by.” Mundane diction, avoidance of flashy imagery, and a flatly conversational tone are his stylistic trademarks. Someday, Maybe, a title suggestive of Stafford’s playful evasiveness, includes such powerful poems as “Report to Crazy Horse” and “Report from a Far Place.” Stories That Could Be True includes “Accountability” and “Whispered into the Ground,” which concludes, “Even far things are real.”
Because Stafford was so prolific, readers might find Robert Bly’s edition of one hundred selected poems, The Darkness Around Us Is Deep, especially valuable. These poems vary from such apparently artless short pieces as “First Grade,” from An Oregon Message, to “Stories to Live in the World With,” from Someday, Maybe. Stafford’s poems are renowned for their accessibility, but he compels his readers to look at the things, events, places, and people of this world from a peculiar slant.
Bibliography
Andrews, Tom, ed. On William Stafford: The Worth of Local Things. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993. Presents an assortment of over fifty mostly (but not wholly) complimentary essays on Stafford’s poetry and prose. Overall, they rank Stafford among the best American poets. Important historical analogies are proposed, favorably comparing his subject matter, voice, and vision to those of poets such as Whitman and Frost. There is enough hard criticism, especially regarding the occasional flatness of Stafford’s style, to allow the reader to share in the debate.
Holden, Jonathan. The Mark to Turn. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1976. This volume, the first book-length study of Stafford’s work, is a useful overview of his major themes and technique. Holden focuses his close readings on poems from Stafford’s first published collection and the four collections with his major publisher that followed. The ninety-one-page study includes a biography.
Kitchen, Judith. Writing the World: Understanding William Stafford. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1999. This comprehensive volume is accessible for the student as well as the good nonacademic reader. In addition to a short biography and overview of Stafford’s work, it presents detailed analysis of seven of Stafford’s major collections and also considers his chapbooks and distinguished small-press editions. This 175-page work concludes with a detailed bibliography of primary and secondary sources.
Nordstrom, Lars. “A William Stafford Bibliography.” Studia Neophilologica 59 (1987): 59-63. Although it is difficult to assemble an exhaustive bibliography because Stafford publishes frequently with small presses, this relatively complete one includes both primary and secondary sources. In addition to prose and poetry collections, it lists critical studies, symposia, interviews, doctoral dissertations, film, and reference materials.
Pinsker, Sanford. “William Stafford: ‘The Real Things We Live By.’” In Three Pacific Northwest Poets. Boston: Twayne, 1987. This chapter begins with a biographical sketch and then unfolds a book-by-book analysis of six of Stafford’s collections, offering close readings of representative poems to support more general conclusions. It includes a selected bibliography.
Stitt, Peter. “William Stafford’s Wilderness Quest.” In The World: Hieroglyphic Beauty: Five American Poets. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985. This excellent chapter develops Stafford as a “wisdom poet” and explores his process-rather-than-substance view of writing. It includes an interview with Stafford originally conducted at his home in 1976 and updated in 1981 at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.