Stafford's college receives his papers and journals

Last week Lewis & Clark College reported that the personal collection of papers and journals from William Stafford are moving to the college's archival facilities. The college already houses a substantial collection of Stafford's works, but this bequest contains much more:

The William Stafford Archive is a collection of 40 years of daily journals and papers representing the poet’s methodical and disciplined writing process, as well as his world travels on behalf of writing and reconciliation...The collection also includes 90 discs of recordings from William Stafford poetry readings, fine press broadsides, and 15,000 photos he took over the course of his life

The college's president said

“This vast treasure will enormously enhance the capacity for the research and study of Bill Stafford for writers, students and scholars from around the world.”

The possibility of traveling to Portland and sitting in the archives for weeks is tempting, but for many, unrealistic. Fortunately, the news gets even better:

The library plans to digitize the entire collection over the next two years and make it available online, enhancing scholarly research for historians, writers, and students alike.

New webpage on Stafford scholarship

This spring I've been toying around with a website, and finally put up a page on Stafford. A major purpose of this new page is to link specifically to scholarship on Stafford that is already online--articles, tributes, interviews and more. The url is a a little bit of a hassle to remember, but here it is: http://poling.travis.googlepages.com/stafford. I've entitled the page "Pieces of a Different World" after a poem in the new collection of Stafford's early work. If there's anything you would like to see on the page, let me know. This blog will keep going, but I will start to migrate some of the content from here over to there. This blog will remain as a home for more reflective pieces, while the webpage will play home to deeper scholarly work.

Article on Stafford in Brethren news publication

In the April 22, 2008 issue of the Church of the Brethren Newsline, Brian Nixon, a member of the Church of the Brethren recounts a poetry reading William Stafford gave at the denomination's 1991 Annual Conference in Portland, OR. I'm pretty certain I was at that conference, but I didn't know anything about Stafford then, at age 12.

Nixon tells this story:

As an impressionable college student, I looked over the plethora of lectures, seeing one that read, "Poetry Reading: William Stafford." This sounded great to me, but I was unsure of exactly who Stafford was. As a member of the Church of the Brethren, I had heard of Mr. Stafford, but was not yet quite "into" him. I knew he published a book of poetry with Brethren Press called "A Scripture of Leaves," and was well loved among the Brethren folk.

But as I stood there and looked at the other conference offerings, I finally decided upon a folk group concert instead (you see, I was "into" music).

Read the rest here.

Ready for 'Another World '? Stafford's early poetry published

Today I went to my local bookstore and stumbled across an article in the May/June 2008 issue pf American Poetry Review. I picked up the magazine and opened it to the first page and thought of the photo there, "That looks like Stafford." My eyes went up the page and sure enough, there was his name. The photo is of a young Stafford at a Civilian Public Service camp during his years as a conscientious objector in World War II.

The article, by Fred Merchant, explains that "Stafford was not a member of one of the historic peace churches [who ran the CPS camps: Quakers, Mennonites and Brethren], though he did in fact meet and marry Dorothy Hope Frantz, the daughter of a Brethren minister, while serving in the Los Prietos camp." When I was a student at Manchester College several years back, where Stafford taught for a year in the mid 1950s, I ran across a membership book of the local Church of the Brethren congregation, and there is at least one Stafford listed among the membership roles. If I remember correctly, it even read "W. Stafford." Without being at the college, I am unable to confirm this, but I might contact the archives and ask for a copy of that page. Stafford was fairly anti-institutionalist, so it would not surprise me if he never joined the denomination, even if he had attended a Brethren congregation and been sympathetic with its ethical and spiritual flavor.

In any event, what is most exciting in the article is the announcement of a forthcoming publication from Graywolf Press of a new collection of poems by Stafford: Another World Instead: The Early Poems of William Stafford, 1937-1947. At 128 pages, Another World promises to be an intriguing look into the young William Stafford, from age 23 to 33, from his college years to after the end of the war. The APR article called it "forthcoming" but it looks as if it's possible to order a copy from the Graywolf Press website already. I'll be waiting to get my hands on it. The eight poems they've printed in APR give just enough of a teaser to whet the appetite for more unreleased Stafford work, but only enough to last a little while.

Celebrate William Stafford's 94th today

Garrison Keillor gave tribute today on The Writer's Almanac to Stafford on his 94th birthday:

It's the birthday of poet William Edgar Stafford, (books by this author) born in Hutchinson, Kansas, in 1914, the same year as American poets Weldon Kees and Randall Jarrell and John Berryman...Stafford usually wrote in the early morning. He sat down with a pen and paper, took a look out the window, and waited for something to occur to him. He wrote about simple things like farms and dead deer and winter. He wrote about the West and his parents and cottonwood trees. He wrote, "In the winter, in the dark hours, when others / were asleep, I found these words and put them / together by their appetites and respect for / each other. In stillness, they jostled. They traded / meanings while pretending to have only one."

After a brief biographical note, Keillor read Stafford's poem "What's In My Journal."

Check out the Friends of William Stafford's events for birthday celebrations around the world. Who knows, there just might be one in your neighborhood.

If nothing else, read a poem or two, or write one yourself.

If you'd like to try Stafford's own method, get up before the sunrise and before anyone else is up. Make some coffee. Get a few sheets of paper and a pen. Lay down on your couch, in your quiet house. Write the first thing that enters your mind. Make a poem out of it.

But in reality, it's not how you write. No one method will work the same way for two people. The point is to find out what works for you, and follow it into oblivion.