What Prayer Is: A Poem

I've been reading A Scripture of Leaves, Stafford's only poetry collection published by Brethren Press. I wrote this poem after reading "To You Around Me," and "An Offering."

UPDATE October, 31 2006: I submitted the poem to Alba: A Journal of Short Poetry. If it is published, I will link to it here.

UPDATE January 12, 2007: The poem has been published in Issue 14, January 2007 of Alba. Read it here.

Stafford and the San Francisco Renaissance

I was browsing through Preaching in a Tavern, a collection of small Brethren tales, when I came across an entry about creative arts in the Civilian Public Service. During World War II, the Church of the Brethren operated labor camps for conscientious objectors. One camp in the Pacific Northwest known as Waldport was home to a number of artists, among them the poet William Everson. The story said that Everson played a part in the beginnings of the San Francisco Renaissance, otherwise known as the Beat movement.

Stafford, another conscientious objector, did not attend this camp, but was stationed nearby. Everson and Stafford got to know one another, and Stafford even published a few works in the Waldport press.

After the war Everson joined the Dominican order. He changed his name to Brother antoninus, but continued his printing and poetry. In 1967 Stafford wrote an introduction critiquing the work of his friend in a small volume entitled The Achievement of Brother Antoninus.

Stafford writes:

Kenneth Rexroth, in an article which helped to launch "the beat generation" into public notice ("San Francisco Letter," in the second issue of Evergreen Review), calls William Everson "probably the most profoundly moving and durable poet of the San Francisco Renaissance," and continues: "His work has a gnarled, even tortured honesty, a rugged unliterary diction, a relentless probing and searching, which are not just engaging, but almost overwhelming." And Rexroth goes on to say, "Anything less like the verse of the fashionable literary quarterlies would be hard to imagine."

I recall reading WS's WWII memoir, Down in my Heart, and being reminded of the prose style I appreciated over ten years ago when I first picked up Jack Kerouac's novels. It makes me wonder: if Stafford had settled in California, would he have become a Beat icon? I don't know for sure. What I can say is that I am thankful that he moved to Indiana and joined the Brethren. Otherwise I might not have discovered him, at least in the ways that I have.

But consider this: Could WS be a Beat in his bones, in his soul of souls? I ask because of the meaning of the word "Beat" as it pertains to Gary Snyder (who interestingly serves as an advisor to Friends of William Stafford) Kerouac, Ginsberg, Rexroth and the like:

The word "Beat" originally derived from circus and carnival argot, reflecting the straitened circumstances of nomadic carnies. In the drug world, "beat" meant "robbed" or "cheated" (as in a "beat" deal)...

The word acquired historical resonance when Jack Kerouac, in a November 1948 conversation with fellow writer John Clellon Holmes, remarked, "So I guess you might say we're a beat generation." ..."It involves a sort of nakedness of mind, and, ultimately, of soul," Holmes wrote, "a feeling of being reduced to the bedrock of consciousness."

By the early 1950's, Kerouac and Ginsberg had begun to emphasize the "beatific" quality of "Beat", investing the viewpoint of the defeated with mystical perspective. "The point of Beat is that you get beat down to a certain nakedness where you actually are able to see the world in a visionary way," wrote Ginsberg, " which is the old classical understanding of what happens in the dark night of the soul."

So much of this seems to resonate in the works of William Stafford, as well as in the wider Anabaptist story, of which Stafford is one part: from Kerouac's "we're a beat generation." ... to Ginsberg's "you get beat down to a certain nakedness where you actually are able to see the world in a visionary way". This may also explain why I, as an Anabaptist poet, am drawn to the visionary ways of Stafford and Kerouac. Even the writing styles of the two poets seem akin. As I've previously discussed in other places,

In his essay "“Belief & Technique for Modern Prose", Kerouac lists these essentials among others for producing prose works: “2. submissive to everything, open, listening...5. Something that you feel will find its own form...13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition

Likewise, Stafford's first rule of writing is "lower your standards."

Here the task gets trickier. Imagine a conversation between Stafford and any of the Beats. What would they say to each other? How would they interact? Someday I'll write that short story. Until then, I'll take your comments.