Product Description
Bestselling author Robert Bly selects his favorite works by the award-winning poet William Stafford. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Stafford:an inspiration and guide
William Stafford described his method of writing poetry as starting from any experience or thought and following it towards what is real. Listening to his poems, one feels one is being shown how to listen to oneself and to the world.

Robert Bly did a nice job of organizing the poems.There is a great video that complements this book:"William Stafford and Robert Bly:A Literary Friendship."

I highly recommend this book, though I think it may be changing my life.Risk it if you dare!

Another Amazon.com reviewer of this book complained about the quality of the paper on which it was published. I had the opposite complaint about our country's largest environmental groups, who send their members slick, environmentally-destructive magazines--as though caring about the environment is an attitude that can be divorced from action.I am guessing that Stafford chose to have his books published in a manner that had the least impact on the environment.It would be nice to have Stafford's entire collection reprinted on acid-free paper, but I have no complaints about the physical condition of _The Darkness Around Us Is Deep_.

Poems of Amazing Human being
There is a reason why William Stafford is on almost every graduate writing program's reading list.Not only did he write what is considered to be the best poem written in the second half of the 20th Century, his entire body of work speaks of the human condition which immediately draws in the reader.

Not having the honor of meeting William Stafford in person, I have to settle for reading his poems and listening to the stories about him, told by those who did know him.This leads to the one fault I can find with this book, for the poetry within is so complete, so warm.Unfortunately my one complaint is quite serious.

My only disappointment in this book is the quality of the paper used.The paper feels and looks like cheap pulp---which would suggest that the publishers don't have the same care of William Stafford's poetry that most readers do.Unfortunately, we readers are caught in a hard place.Many of his books are out of print and we are limited to collections such as these.My advice is to seek out some of the original editions.

I give the poetry Five stars, but I have to give the book itself a three because of the production values

Traveling Through the Dark
Traveling Through the Dark is one of my all time favorite poems.I first read it when I was a freshman in high school and have admired it ever since.This is not to say that this is the only decent poem he wrote.Allhis poems are very good.If you are looking for some new poetry, readWilliam Stafford.

Traveling Through the Dark
Traveling Through the Dark is one of my all time favorite poems.I first read it when I was a freshman in high school and have admired it ever since.This is not to say that this is the only decent poem he wrote.Allhis poems are very good.If you are looking for some new poetry, readWilliam Stafford.

A Fine Selection
Robert Bly offers a fine collection of William Stafford's work.Bly's affection and respect for Stafford shines in the introduction, which offers insights that will help many readers more fully access Stafford's work. For me, the poems themselves radiate the power and strength of gentleness and simplicity.As Stafford writes in "By a River in the OsageCountry: " You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about." The selection is rich with Staffords imaginal reflections on family, his children, his parents, and the simple mysteries of the world. These are poems of moral intelligence expressed with great integrity.Thisis what we mean when we say a person is "grounded."The volumeconcludes with the classic "A Ritual to Read to Each Other," a stirring affirmation of courage and authenticity - a touchstone in an ageof denial and fearful people lying to each other. ... Read more

Product Description
William Stafford (1914-1993) was an earnest, perceptive, and often affecting American poet who filled his life and ours with poetry of challenge and consolation. The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems gathers unpublished works from his last year, including the poem he wrote the day he died, as well as an essential and wide-ranging selection of works from throughout his career. An editorial team including his son Kim Stafford, the poet Naomi Shihab Nye, and the poet, translator, and author Robert Bly collaborated on shaping this book of Stafford's pioneering career in modern poetry. The poems in The Way It Is encompass Stafford's rugged domesticity, the political edge of his irony, and his brave starings-off into emptiness.
Amazon.com Review
What we remember about a lyric poet is an extremely smallfraction of the total work; time, aided by editors, creates areputation out of about five great poems. In the case of WilliamStafford, The Way It Is has considerably expanded the field ofcandidates. His widely anthologized "Ceremony," "Thinking for Berky,"and "Traveling through the Dark" are here, along with othercontenders, including "Adults Only," which begins, "Animals own a furworld; / people own worlds that are variously, pleasingly bare." Awriter of silence, loss, memory, and conviction, Stafford wrote a poemalmost every morning, rising at four to eat toast and compose. This isa part of his myth that the Stafford industry--other poets, workshopleaders, old friends--agrees is admirable, the hard-working farmhandwho beats the cows to the dairy barn.Stafford's poem-a-day habitcertainly made things difficult for his literary executors KimStafford, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Robert Bly. Nonetheless, The Way ItIs manages to encompass a pleasingly varied survey of Stafford's35- book career, from his first collection, West of Your City,published in 1960, to the lyric written on the morning of his death onAugust 28, 1993. Not every poem is as perfect as "The Farm on theGreat Plains"; some of them are embarrassingly sentimental, and theeditors have curiously omitted a number of Stafford's better and morecomplicated poems in favor of more recent unpublished ones that hepresumably didn't have time to revise. But all Stafford poems areworth reading at least once, and in the absence of a many-volumedCollected Poems, The Way It Is is a useful compromise, makingavailable poems from his moral, religious, secular, maverick,political, and apolitical modes--all of them wise and at onceexquisitely rhetorical and deeply imagistic. --Edward Skoog ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Personal, Reflective Images of Life in Abundance
This collection of Stafford's poems represents a broad swath of his best work.The poems are at once intimate and personal and grand and universal.If you search for truth, Stafford leads down pathways that illuminate the darkness around.

William Stafford: Crossing Time & Distance
"You are a memory
too strong to leave this world..."

So wrote William Stafford in "For A Lost Child"
but it could apply equally as well to him.
His absence continues to leave a conspicuous void.
Still, there remains his writing, and this definitive volume
contains the majority of his finest work.

"Starting here, what do you want to remember?"

So opens "You Reading This, Be Ready"
and it's somewhat telling of what his writing was predominantly about:

Assuring remembrance. Making note of what endures.
The beauty. The sorrow. The questions.
Marking even the smallest snapshot scene as every bit as worthy of recall
as any grand-scale panorama.
Even as his own life and times become relegated to the past,
his poems ~ indeed, every insight he set on paper ~
forever will remain in the present tense ~
ever as accurate and timely as they were when first composed.
It's not only how things were, but how they are ~ the way it still is.

His based his work on common human experience,
the lessons and questions garnered in the day-to-day world.
Uncomplicated. Mindful. Authentic. Perceptive.
Life-affirming even as they question,
life-enhancing even when they convey a brutal truth.
Certainly no poet or writer should be without his presence on their nearest bookshelf.
His perceptions and voice reach across time and distance so vividly alive
that he easily incites a creative response ~
setting any aspiring writer fast upon his or her own path.
Serving as a literary generator, of sorts,
to paraphrase something Robert Frost once called those rare inspiring individuals.
He had a way of speaking to each reader so directly,
he made of them a friend.

You will never fail to notice every thread of light upon a leaf,
every solitary play of colour across the sunset sky,
every sad passenger in any passing car once you've shared his vision.
Rare was the moment, memory, thought or question,
he let goby without notice, contemplation, honourable mention.

"What can anyone give you greater than now...?"
he once asked and that thought still holds true.

And if you open this book completely at random, right here and now,
letting it fall open to any given page,
whatever line your eyes come to rest upon and read
will be pure gift: your life will be better for it.

Stafford's Voice Makes You Listen
When I read the poems of William Stafford, it feels less like reading and more like "listening."There's something about his voice that calls me to attention, that makes me notice not only the words on the page but all the sounds that attend my mornings: the return of the finches to the Hawthorne tree, for example, or the rustle of wind in the new cherry blossoms.As I re-read some of my favorite poems from The Way it Is, I find myself in a strange situation; I feel as though I have traded places with the poet, "partly propped up" on the sofa in his den at 4 a.m., where he wrote every day until he died in 1993. Perhaps it is because he often tells us so much about the writing process itself; Stafford's poems are imbued with that particular room; they arise from that private space he allows us to enter for afew moments at a time. He often brings in the same details over and over, the mundane yet transcendent things he notices in the early hours: sunlight moving across a wood floor, trees "still trying to arch as far as they could," the houses that "waited, white, blue, gray..." The things themselves, as in the poetry of William Carlos Williams, become the containers of ideas, thought, emotion.The diction is simple, the rhythm a comfort; before we know it, we've been lured into a place of transcendence without even trying.
The sun becomes a constant companion to the writing act, a kind of muse that illuminates the hand at work. For instance, the last poem he wrote, just hours before he died, begins with the line: "Well, it was yesterday./Sunlight used to follow my hand."Towards the end, he reiterates: "I listened and put my hand/out in the sun again.It was all easy."Perhaps the knowledge that these are the last lines Stafford will writeadds to their poignancy (that hand will soon be stilled, in darkness), but I feel privileged, every time I open this book, to be in the presence of a voice that speaks so simply and yet with such passion.Because of the sheer number of poems and writings Stafford left behind, there are bound to be some clunkers, some lines that seem overly simplistic and sentimental, but the force of Stafford's voice overcomes these occasional lapses.The Way it Is is a "must have" for the writer's library; crack open the book at the start of your own writing session and you'll remember why you ever wanted to be a writer in the first place.

Intelligent and meditative.
This latest and last living collection of William Stafford's work covers the past 20 odd years of his poetry as well as giving the reader some new, never before published work including the poem he wrote on the day that he died.This collection gives us an overview of Stafford's poetry that reveals him to be a man who is both interested and amused by the world around him.The book is divided into four sections, each of which is full of intelligent and meditative work reminiscent of the best of E.B. White's essays.While White was an essayist (not just a children's writer), and Stafford a poet, both men revel in unraveling the intricacies of the world using nothing more than the simple information provided to them in their daily lives.In "Stories From Kansas", Stafford simplifies the voracious egos of humankind into silly yet proud tufts of grass, "Little bunches of/grass pretend they are bushes/that will never bow./ They bow...""The Way I! ! t Is" is reccomended reading for those who like a little zen with their humility or a little salt with their watermelon.

(excerpted from "Sic Vice & Verse" review by Carlye Archibeque.) ... Read more

Product Description
This book brings together four privately printed chapbooks and offers them to the general public in one volume. All the poems are in William Stafford's familiar, reflective voice, and some had been freshly typed at the time of Stafford's death in August of 1993. The book is hospitable to a full range of experiences, moods, stunts with language, tones, expressive landmarks, and intimacies with the universe. Long considered a major voice in twentieth century American poetry, William Stafford is also one of our nation's most popular poets. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Sanctuary
I read this book with eyes half-shut, a bedtime story. The poems sang me a lullaby. The book itself is a collection of four chapbooks, edited and assembled by William Stafford's son Kim. My favorite of these was last, "The Methow River Poems" created by Stafford for the Forest Service, to be etched on road signs in Washington State.

Human emotion and story is given to landscape in these poems, and that is my favorite type of poem. Sort of an anthropomorphic way of life--a narcissistic, humanistic way of being which strangely exists outside of self and enters into everything around all of us: people, deer, waves, mountains, trees, rocks, rivers, stars. These poems carve a door, draw the non-human inside the human, and by doing so, draws us humans into the non-human realm, towards something greater, something worthy of worship, to a very, very still and quiet sanctuary.

How you stand here makes a difference. How you listen for the next things to happen. How you breathe . . .
This wonderful collection of poems is now over ten years old. The first posthumously published Stafford volume, it is full of the breathtaking and insightful poems for which this remarkable poet is known. Stafford's relaxed, friendly voice belies the depth and complexity of his poetry.

Bill Stafford (1914-1993) was a greatly loved and admired writer and teacher, authored 67 volumes and was the winner of the 1963 National Book Award, the Shelley Award from the Poetry Society of America and served as Poetry Consultant for the Library of Congress (1970-71). He was appointed Oregon Poet Laureate in 1975.

Stafford's poetry is truly a part of the American landscape. Seven of the poems from this volume are "published" on roadside plaques along the river that runs from the heart of the Cascade Mountains in Washington State to meet the Columbia River. The Methow River Poems, among his most visionary and beautiful creations, are a series of 19 poems written shortly before his death. Stafford answered a request by two U.S. Forest Service rangers, Curtis Edwards and Sheela McLean, who wrote him in 1992 asking him to provide the words for some of the 'interpretive' signs that appear throughout our national and state park lands. Stafford enthusiastically agreed. These poems were originally published by Confluence Press in 1995 as The Methow River Poems.

To my mind, the poem that best expresses Stafford's vision is "On Being a Person." I myself have read this poem over and over and have recited it to large audiences at commemorative readings of Stafford's poetry. You can hear a pin drop in the audience when this poem is being recited--so riveting, deep and sweeping is its vision. How we stand makes a difference. How we breathe makes a difference.

According to Kim Stafford "The poems my father contributed to the Methow project form a distinctive conclusion to this new book (Even in Quiet Places), and, if it is not too grand to say so, an unusual enrichment to the literary history of the American landscape . . .I believe the Methow poems display in the extreme a habit of mind that ... characterizes ... my father's life work." Work that reflected his "customary prolific generosity," somewhat random, with "nuggets of insight" that were universal despite an easy-going, particular, relaxed style.

There is a video of William Stafford discussing his commission by the Forest Service to write poems for road signs along the Methow River in Washington State. In the video Garrison Keillor reads six of the poems, Naomi Shihab Nye reads "A Valley Like This," and Stafford himself reads "Emily, This Place and You."

These are visions worth treasuring and sharing. Even in quiet places.

Poetry in the Wilderness
Accessable, powerful poems.These book covers topics from nature to war to using your feet to walk out of a sleasy show. My favorite single poem was the one entitled Watching Sandhill Cranes. This book is a collection of four volumes of poetry.My favorite section was the last, The Methow River Poems.These were written for the U.S. Forest Service and displayed along a wilderness road.I loved the idea of hikers coming upon a poem which grabs their attention for a moment and then re-focuses it again in a new light on the beauty around them.

Alive, real poetry
I picked this book up by chance; I happened upon it in the library. So I took it home with a stack of other volumes of poetry. Of those five or six books, this is the only one I remember. Reading these poems is like having someone sitting in front of you weaving a story. Every sight, everysound, every movement comes alive and performs before you.And whilesome poets allow the beauty of their language distance you from the poemitself, Stafford relies on simple, clear, true language, such that thereader can identify similar situations and emotions in her or his own life.Even in Quiet Places is a marvelous work, simple enough for someone justdelving into poetry, and with messages deep and introspective enough for adiscerning reader to envelope themselves in. It's fabulous! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The One Volume to Have of William Stafforrd
If you only purchase one William Stafford book, make it this volume of his collected earlier works.I worship the man, what can I say.Just tons of beautiful poems here.If you want an intro to his poetry, this is the way to go.

William Stafford, American poet--everyone should read him!
I picked up William Stafford's "Stories That Could Be True" at my community college library because Garrison Keillor had said that morning (January 17) that it was Stafford's birthday.I opened the book and found a poem, "Birthday," which begins, "We have a dog named 'Here'.... That wasn't quite what I was looking for, so I flipped through the pages and found "A Message from the Wanderer": "Today outside your prison I stand/ and rattle my walking stick:Prisoners, listen;/ you have relatives outside.And there are/ thousands of ways to escape..... This book got me reading poetry again, after many years of not reading.I can't find the book now--it's out of print and unavailable--but I'm looking for other books by the same author. Read a few of these poems, and I'll bet you'll be looking, too! ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (3)

William Stafford remembered
During the years I lived in Portland, Oregon, William Stafford was an inspiring friend who gave me advice at times when I asked for it and was an inspiration for my own writing.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves poetry.
Wanda Weiskopf
Author of two collections of poetry and the memoir, "On the Wings of Song, My Life with the Maestro."

William Stafford - Poetry - Another World
Excellent compilation of Stafford's poems. One of modern times greatest poets. Well worth the read.

An anthology of vintage free-verse poetry by teacher, award-winning author, and poet William Stafford
Another World Instead: The Early Poems of William Stafford 1937-1947 is an anthology of vintage free-verse poetry by teacher, award-winning author, and poet William Stafford. The poems have been chosen from Stafford's earlier works by poet, teacher, and former Marine officer (one of the first to be honorably discharged as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War) Fred Marchant. Many of the poems date back to the World War II era; Stafford was a conscientious objector during this time, assigned under penalty of law to work in Civilian Public Service camps, a type of internal exile within his own country. Nearly all the poems in Another World Instead have never before been published - now their tale of a committed pacifist and fledgling poet living in a time of war can be told. Highly recommended. "Fate": More steadfast than a truck / Along a narrow street / A minute looks for you / Until you meet. ... Read more

Product Description
A prolific writer, a famous pacifist, a respected teacher, and a literary mentor to many, William Stafford is one of the great American poets of the twentieth century. His first major collection--Traveling Through the Dark--won the National Book Award. He published more than sixty-five volumes of poetry and prose and was Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress-a position now known as the Poet Laureate. Before his death in 1993, he gave his son Kim the greatest gift and challenge: to be his literary executor.

In Early Morning, Kim creates an intimate portrait of a father and son who shared many passions: archery, photography, carpentry, and finally, writing itself. But Kim also confronts the great paradox at the center of William Stafford's life. The public man, the poet who was always communicating with warmth and feeling-even with strangers-was capable of profound, and often painful, silence within the family. By piecing together a collage of his personal and family memories, and sifting through thousands of pages of his father's daily writing and poems, Kim illuminates a fascinating and richly lived life.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Like Father, Like Son
This is a book to savor.The second time through, I limited myself to only a page or two each night.The prose is exalted, the insights profound, and the depiction of William Stafford is unflinching and never sentimental.If you care about excellent writing, or being human, or about poetry, or especially about William Stafford's poetry, you will not regret reading this book.

Deep and Rich
The relationship between father and son is illuminated by the father's poems and the son's prose in this sensitive biography of William Stafford by his son Kim.Our meditation and writing group has spent six months slowly absorbing this richness.This book bears reading and rereading.

For me this book is a totem...
I didn't so much read this book as I absorbed it...this is a book seeped in wisdom and quiet integrity.During my first reading I carried it around like a companion.There are many books that I have loved but there are few that I trust completely.

If you enjoy William Stafford's poetry then his son Kim is an expert guide into the deeper realms of his father's life and work.William Stafford is one of the few poets I know of whose life (the way he raised his children, educated his students and maintained his principles) blends seamlessly with his work.

Oftentimes great men are a bit pre-occupied being great men and forget to focus on the upbringing of their children.Kim Stafford shares with the reader the experience of being raised by a great artist who had the generosity of spirit and clear headedness to bring his artistry home with him and apply it to his family life.

Many reviewers describe Stafford as a remote and distant father...I would characterize him as an extremely careful father...who communicated love through reverence and shared experience.

Poetry and philosophy aside 'Early Morning' is also a lovely memoir that is deeply personal without being suffocating...artful without being pretentious.I envy anyone who gets to open its pages for a first reading. ... Read more

Product Description
Stafford's advice to beginning poets has become a favorite text in writing programs
... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Rachelle Benveniste says this a Must for Writers
I bought this book for the second time because my first wore out. William Stafford is my muse. I am a writing teacher and he has helped so much withrealizinghow important compassion is to the writing process. "Welcome every word you write,"he says and of course, all writing is process, it is an act ofdiscovery . Welcome that discovery and keep on writing, he seems to say. It is not about the poem being good or bad, it is about it being inevitable.Thereis not one poem that
can contain your truth. You write the "bad" ones along with the "good" and harvest a bounty of poems in yourtrue voice. And in this way, Stafford seems to be saying, is how we let our heart sing and how we succeed. This book is a must for every writer.

A Seminal Work of Poetic Insight
This book of Stafford's essays ranks next to those books -like "The Rescued Year," "Someday, Maybe" or "Oregon Message"- containing his best poems. Here, Stafford muses in his quiet tone and with unassuming wisdom about the essence of writing and teaching poetry.

As he says, "A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he issomeone 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."

This declaration alone, at a time where postmodern self-congratulation is so often confused for deep thinking, has nurtured my writing and reading of poetry more than any of the many books I read about the poetic craft.

This book is more than a collection by a poet speaking of what he's dedicated his life to, it is a treatise on how to live one's life. This is not something I'd say about many works, yet here is stunnigly clear.

Replace the word "writing" for "life," and you decide ...

"When I write, I like to have an interval before me when I am not likely to be interrupted.For me, this means usually the early morning, before others awake.I get a pen and paper, take a glance out of the window (often it is dark out there), and wait.It is like fishing.But I do not wait very long, for there is always a nibble--and this is where receptivity comes in.To get started I will accept anything that occurs to me.Something always occurs, of course, to any of us. We can't keep from thinking. Maybe I have to settle for an immediate impression:it's cold, or hot, or dark, or bright, or in between!Or--well, the possibilities are endless.If I put down something, that thing will help the next thing come, and I'm off.If I let the process go on, things will occur to me that were not at all in mind when I started.These things, odd or trivial as they may be, are somehow connected.And if I let them string out, surprising things will happen."

I recommend it to budding poets, those whose writing is growing tired, or anyone trying to make sense of being in this world. People like me perhaps, hoping for some guidance who -as Nietzsche wrote- earnestly endeavour to "becoming who you already are."

A fabulous dissertation on the craft of writing
William Stafford has a way of writing that makes you feel like a welcome guest in his house.Here he talks in prosaic passages about what is important in writing, how to inspire your own writing, together with examples of his own work.

Reading this book is much like reading Stafford's poetry.The tone is relaxed but captivating, and he makes the task of writing well seem effortless.This book, together with "You Must Revise Your Life," is a fantastic read for writers of any level or ability. ... Read more

Product Description
In this posthumous collection of his meditations on writing and the writing life, William Stafford's lifelong refusal to separate his work from the task of living responsibly -- "What a person is shows up in what a person does" -- rings clear.
Stafford kept a journal for nearly half a century and produced over 20,000 poems -- a treasure trove of writing still being uncovered long after his death.
The book begins with the words "To overwhelm by rightness," a phrase evoking the two demands Stafford made on himself: to write well, and to live uprightly. This book lives up to those deceptively simple ethics. In his words William Stafford lives on as a voice for our times -- a bright light in a clouded age.
William Stafford, who died in 1993, authored more than thirty-five books of poetry and prose during his lifetime, including the highly acclaimed Writing the Australian Crawl: Views on the Writer's Vocation, You Must Revise Your Life, and Traveling Through the Dark, winner of the National Book Award for Poetry.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Picking up out of the current as it goes by . . .
The most important American poet of the second half of the Twentieth Century--Stafford is my top candidate, anyway. You may have somebody else in mind.

Stafford is so many things. For one, a poet of great spontaneity--of accepting what comes, of luck, and of writing it down:

"If you write . . . the activity of writing will make things occur to you in your mind. You write the documentary that you think, rather than the documentary that you live. When you write, it doesn't make so very much difference what you have done or intend to do, but it makes quite a bit of difference what occurs to you at the moment you're writing. . . . it's just as if you have a readiness to respond to what occurs to you at the moment."

Stafford is so humble that we may have yet to grasp how vast he is--how expansive his vision.

For Bill Stafford, writing is not about being a great writer, or getting published in the best publications--it's about being a good person--a whole way of life, of which the written poem on the page is an evidence, a record, a door that opens to us, his readers.

"In everyone's life there's all this torrent of things happening and a writer . . . maybe one way to say it would be someone who pays attention at least at intervals, to that torrent. Or a writer is not someone who has to dream of things to write, but has to figure out what to pick up out of the current as it goes by."

Lucky us, whether we write, or read or just live, that Paul Merchant and Vince Wixon put together this collection of Stafford's statements on his writing and teaching.

We're lucky indeed to have three other books in the same vein: You Must Revise Your Life (Poets on Poetry),Writing the Australian Crawl (Poets on Poetry), and Crossing Unmarked Snow: Further Views on the Writer's Vocation (Poets on Poetry).

There's a line in American poetry running straight from ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson through Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams. Stafford, like Dickinson, is humble. He's proximite to nature, sees into the depth of the world, speaks directly to to his reader like a friend and with greatest facility in everyday language--all of which place him right in that line.

Who's next? ... Read more

Product Description
Throughout most of the 20th century, from World War I until his death in 1993, America poet and pacifist William Stafford remained convinced that wars don’t work. In his poetry and other writing, he showed that it is crucial to think independently when fanatics act and to speak for reconciliation when nations take sides. This inspiring volume collects the antiwar writings of this lifelong advocate for peace: journal excerpts, pacifist poems, interviews, and an account of his own near-hanging at the hands of American patriots. In thought-provoking passages sure to strike a chord today, he assesses U.S. political habits and suggests that there are always alternative approaches to aggression. This powerful book about nonviolence includes never-before-published excerpts from William Stafford's daily journal from 1951 to 1991. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Useful history of CO's during WW II; but journal entries are less than profound
Poet William Stafford was born in 1914, and was a Masters student at the University of Kansas when World War II broke out.Based on his lifelong beliefs, partially inherited from his pacifist mother, he got Conscientious Objector (CO) status and was placed in CO work camps for the duration of the war.His first writings about war and pacifism were collected in the book DOWN IN MY HEART.EVERY WAR HAS TWO LOSERS was published 10 years after Stafford's death in 1993, and is a collection of his writings and interviews which touched on peace, war and pacifism.The first part of the book consists of selections from early morning journal entries.These I found mostly trivial scribblings, with a few occasional standouts.The next part contains a few dozen poems, and was enjoyable.The last part was primarily interviews about pacifism and recollections of his CO days.Overall, my favorite parts of the book were (1) its title - which is quite a zen koan, and keeps you thinking; (2) the lovely introduction by Kim Stafford, William Stafford's son; (3) many poems, including the one that starts the volume (These Mornings); and (4) the historical value of learning about CO's during the "good war".There were apparently thousands of them.I'm very much against war myself, but people ask me:what about the Revolutionary War?What about the Civil War?What would you do about Hitler?Well, all those wars are in the past, and we can't re-fight them now.Books like this help us keep in mind what will be lost, even in a so-called "just" war, even if we "win".Stafford and other CO's present an option to choosing sides in a conflict, and make room for reconciliation and peace.I write this on July 4th, 2010, just before fireworks are lit here in San Francisco.I hope there's more peace in the world on the next July 4th.

If A Book Could Save the World. . . it might be this one.
As a review of this book, I offer only that after reading less than a third of it, I ordered additional copies to give away to others. I can't think of another time that I have done this.Expect to be prodded by humor and deep thinking, and moved to joy and tears by Stafford's reflections on war and peace. ... Read more

Product Description
Collection of poems speaks to the values of peacemaking, simple living, and a deep faith. Stafford uncovers the inner workings of life itself, calling forth images celebrating the goodness of God's creation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Another wonderful offering from William Stafford
The warmth and reality that is exhibited in William Stafford's poetry books is always outstanding - and this book is no exception.I'm glad I was able to add this one to my collection of his work.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Stafford's last trade book
The last book of William Stafford's from Harper is perhaps not the best first book of his to read - but, as one might expect given his maturity, these poems are sparser and even more apparently simple than some of his earlier work. As always with a William Stafford book the poems range over a variety of styles and although the poems are not directly linked, as you read more of Stafford, all his work in a sense forms one whole. Perhaps more than any review it is better to offer the title poem:

Passwords
A PROGRAM OF POEMS

Might people stumble and wander
for not knowing the right words,
and get lost in their wandering?

So--should you stand in the street
answering all passwords
day and night for any stranger?

You couldn't do that.
But sometimes your words
might link especially to some other person.

Here is a package,
a program of passwords.
It is to bring strangers together. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

William Stafford
William Stafford is one of my favorite poets. His poetry is direct and as he once said, "much like talk." His subject matter is commonplace ("Volkswagen," "Why I am Happy," "Our Neighborhood"), often rural (he lives on a lake in Oregon), and open-palm honest and immediate ("You were a princess, lost; I/was a little bird. Nobody cared/where we went or how we sang").

His poetry is simple (as opposed to being grandiose or reaching for large effects), and it's in that simplicity that he serves up the most pleasure:

Now stand up. The old law says
work for pay. Try that shovel
or this broom, just to see
how it is, for a while.

This collection was published in 1987 and is as good if not better than the dozens of volumes by Stafford that preceded it. The book offers up a healthy number of poems (116); most are short (fewer than 25 lines). There is excellent work here by a wonderful poet. ... Read more

Product Description
Stafford reflects on the writing process and on the influences on his art
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

great insights!
Stafford's book about the art of writing poetry includes several wonderful poems, including yellow car,about the hope we find in life.

Definitely worth purchasing for anyone interested in writing poetry or understanding a poet. ... Read more

Product Description
Poetry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Presaging the 1960s.
Stafford's poetry is beautiful and concise.His pacifism, appreciation of nature, and interest in eastern mysticism presage many of the major movements of the late fifties through early seventies.

Yet Stafford's voice lacks the selfishness which would sometimes blight these later movements.Instead of struggling egoistically against an unjust war, Stafford represents an innocent-minded struggle against war of any kind, but grounded in the work-ethic of depression era America.

(Aside:Kim Stafford's introduction to her father's work is every bit as interesting as the main text.)

Thoughtful people's poets
Oregon's poet laureate William Stafford unassumingly answered the phone, "Bill" and wrote lovingly wrote of mother, father, a moment in his life. Simple, but not simplistic, his poetry draws deep from the wellof the everyday. This collection includes the poem Stafford wrote the dayhe died. How typical of this extraordinary, ordinary man to keep on givingto the end! ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (3)

Well written documentary
I acquired this book over a year ago and I'm still reading a lot of detail that seems to be more accurate.It allows one to have an open mind, especially when comparing Mozart's life to some of the more popular movies such as Amadeus.

Debunked at last!
From first page to last, Mr Stafford delivers as promised, a thorough review of primary as well as secondary sources.I couldn't help but be amazed at the omnipresence of the idiotic gossip that has masqueraded for centuries as "revelations" of Mozart's life and work, now unmasked by Mr Stafford.Essential in any library of Mozart biography!

Beware Acqua Toffana!
This book is really a piece of work. The author clearly relishes retelling the many ludicrous myths surrounding W.A. Mozart, and the retelling, more so than the delightful debunking of the stories, is the really wonderfulpart of this book. That said, the debunking is pretty cool too, and willgive you a pretty good overview of the biographical literature on Mozart toboot. My favorite tale is the one spun by the wife of General VonLudendorff(yes, one of the Heroes of Tannenburg), a Naziess, about how the freemasons (not Salieri!) poisoned Mozart because, as a nascent german nationalist, hehad decided to turn his back on their international brotherhood. ... Read more