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 being able to write a poem every day. He wrote thousands of poems. When an aspiring poet asked him what she should do when she sat down to write but wasn’t able to do her best work. Stafford said, “Lower your standards.” In other words, even when you can’t achieve Paradise Lost, press on.
Bly, Robert. Introduction. The Darkness Around Us Is Deep: Selected Poems of William Stafford by William Stafford, 1993, HarperPerennial, p. ix.