Tag: William Stafford

Best of 2021: Book Prescriptions

As we finish this difficult year, I’m wondering how I can thank my readers for sticking with me. Blogs can’t offer hugs, a place to go scream, a few extra hours of sleep, or stiff drinks. However, I can prescribe books that can help those who have this year’s Common … Read More

“We must accustom ourselves to talking without orating, and to writing without achieving Paradise Lost.”

It’s clear to me that times like these – frigid temperatures, fights in Washington, and February flatness — call for help from William Stafford. Why?  He is a poet who knows what to do when times are hard. Press on, I think he’d say. He is known for … Read More

“Your job is to find what the world is trying to be.”

Stafford2JPGThis is the last line from the poem “Vocation” by one of my favorite poets, William Stafford. He was an advocate of the process of discovery. In Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, he writes, “A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who … Read More

Some time when the river is ice ask me what mistakes I have made.

stafford croppedThis is the first line from a well-loved poem by William Stafford. He often writes about things that appear to be calm, but aren’t.  I think his poems are like that, too.  At first glance, they don’t seem very challenging. But it’s a mistake to read quickly because you can … Read More