Saturday, 7 March 2015


(1914-1993)

     William Stafford was born on January 17, 1914, in Hutchinson, Kansas. He remembered the Depression very well. Despite his family's hardships, Stafford's father encouraged all his children in reading. While working as a paperboy or field hand, Stafford attended high school and, briefly, junior college. He was writing regularly even then. He enrolled in the University of Kansas, working at various jobs to pay his way. He took active part in the struggles that later became the Civil Rights movement.
     
Original typewriting
World War II brought Stafford to a troubled period in his life. He registered as a conscientious objector in 1942, and ended up at a series of alternative service camps in Arkansas, California, and Illinois. During this time, Stafford established the discipline of writing every morning, and in those years wrote a great number of poems, many of which are now considered among his best. During his California service in 1944, he met Dorothy Hope Frantz, a schoolteacher who taught and lived nearby. That same year, Stafford and Frantz were married; in time, they would raise four children together. They returned to California in 1948, and Stafford took teaching jobs at various colleges, finally selling into Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, in 1956.
     West of Your City, was published, which was received well. But two years later, when he published his second volume, Traveling Through the Dark, it was instantly heralded. It received the National Book Award that year and established Stafford as a poet of the highest order. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1966.
During this time, Stafford was publishing his poetry in literary magazines, and although the poems received much notice, it wasn't until 1960 that his first volume, titled
     Stafford wrote poems and essays steadily the rest of his life. While teaching at Lewis and Clark, he embarked on reading tours often, gave poetry workshops and attended literary conferences. In 1970, Stafford served as the Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress (later renamed Poet Laureate). His later volumes of poetry, such as Allegiances (1970) and Someday, Maybe (1973), remained lively and brilliant. Though he favored simple, "spoken" diction and rhythms, his poetry always embodied the complicated relationships between nature and society, and between our obligations and our affections. He never descended into didacticism despite his continuing commitment to political activism. He retired from teaching in 1980, but continued to write, travel, and give poetry readings until his death in 1993.


A star hit in the hills behind our house
up where the grass turns brown touching the sky.

Meteors have hit the world before, but this was near,
and since TV; few saw, but many felt the shock.
The state of California owns that land
(and out from shore three miles), and any stars
that come will be roped off and viewed on week days 8 to 5.

A guard who took the oath of loyalty and denied 
any police record told me this:
"If you don't have a police record yet
you could take the oath and get a job
if California should be hit by another star."

"I'd promise to be loyal to California
and to guard any stars that hit it," I said,
"or any place three miles out from shore,
unless the star was bigger than the state�
in which case I'd be loyal to it."

But he said no exceptions were allowed,
and he leaned against the state-owned meteor
so calm and puffed a cork-tip cigarette
that I looked down and traced with my foot in the dust
and thought again and said, "OK�any star."



Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason�
her side was warm; her fan lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all�my only swerving�,
then pushed her over the edge into the river.

PASSING REMARK

In scenery I like flat country.
In life I don't like much to happen.

In personalities I like mild colorless people.
And in colors I prefer gray and brown.

My wife, a vivid girl from the mountains,
syas, "Then why did you choose me?"

Mildly I lower my brown eyes�
there are so many things admirable people
     do not understand.



Bibliography:

Andrews, Tom 1995: William Stafford: The Worth of Local Things. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan.
Stafford, William 1994: The Darkness Around us is Deep: Selected Poems. New York: Harper.
������� 1998: The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems. San Francisco: Graywolf Press.

En espa�ol:
Ulloa Garay, Ricardo, Gerardo C�sar Hurtado, 2004: Poetas del siglo XX en lengua inglesa: Nuevas traducciones. San Jos�: Universidad de Costa Rica.

Webliography:


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