William Stafford Online Reader website launched

I've been thinking for awhile of starting a website with links to web content relating to Stafford, so I decided to go ahead with it, and today I launched the William Stafford Online Reader. This blog is being phased out, but may stay up for now for archival purposes. If you want to find poems, books, art, media and articles by and about Stafford, check out the site. There's also a news page on the new website so you can stay up to date with all the latest that's happening.

William Stafford & Martin Luther King, Jr. share more than one day

Since Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was commemorated this year on Stafford's birthday, January 17, I posted on Twitter a link to a poem about segregation entitled "Serving with Gideon" (read the poem here). The connection between King and Stafford go deeper than one day of remembrance, so I'd like to provide some more context for the poem and its relation to the work that Stafford did on behalf of peace and justice.

Dennis Hopper honored with Stafford poem

This is old news by now, but I only recently learned of it, so it counts as news here. Last March, actor Viggo Mortensen honored his friend Dennis Hopper (1963-2010) when Hopper received a star on Hollywood Boulevard with a short speech in which he quoted Stafford.

Dennis Hopper was born in Dodge City, Kansas. Perhaps the finest and most honest poet that state has produced was William Stafford. In a 1971 interview he once said something that could have come straight from Dennis: "I keep following this sort of hidden river of my life, you know, whatever the topic or impulse which comes, I follow it along trustingly. And I don't have any sense of its coming to a kind of crescendo, or of its petering out either. It is just going steadily along."

Mortensen closed with a reading of Stafford's "For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid." Read Mortensen's remarks along with the poem published by The Nation.

Thoughts for the future and some notes on faith

You might not be able to tell just by looking at this blog, with its relatively low number of posts, but I've been veraciously reading and studying William Stafford for the past five years. The trouble is I don't always know how to turn my work into content for this blog. I'm considering spinning off a less blog-esque website to introduce new folks to Stafford without having to wade through a bunch of content they may or may not be interested in. I don't know what it would look like, but my brain's working on it. In the mean time I'll be completing an MA thesis focusing, in part, on Stafford over the next few months, so I'm not sure how quickly things will change around here. For now, I'll leave you with some of my latest (unedited) reflections on Stafford's work as it relates to spirituality and theology. I'll be taking a class in Narrative Theology this semester, examining WS's World War 2 memoir Down in my Heart, and this is what I started thinking about:

Read Stafford's Poems in Ebooks

Ever since I got my Nook ereader device this summer, I've been checking and rechecking to see if any books by William Stafford have been published in ebook format. As far as I've seen, no such product exists yet. The key word is "yet." I have little doubt that eventually publishers will release at least a few of Stafford's titles electronically, but there is no way to make sure. The next best thing is to request ebooks the publisher. Fortunately, Barnes & Noble and Amazon both allow customers to ask, with "Tell the publisher" links on book pages. Of course it is in the interest of Amazon & Barnes & Noble to have as many books available for their ereader devices, but it also helps readers voice their desires for certain books, and just might help expedite the process.

If you would like to read Stafford on your ereader, or would simply like to see Stafford's words reach as wide an audience as possible, visit ebook sellers' websites to request ebook formats. Here are the links for the 1999 collection The Way It Is.

• Barnes and Noble: Click "Tell the publisher you want this in NOOKbook format" to the right of the cover image.

• Amazon: Click "Tell the Publisher! I’d like to read this book on Kindle" below the cover image.

Search around for other Stafford books on these websites and click the links for as many as you like. Who knows? We might get Stafford ebooks in time for Christmas!

Interview with Haydn Reiss, creator of 'Every War Has Two Losers" film

William Stafford as Religious Poet?

If you've followed this blog for any amount of time, you'd know I read a certain amount of religious meaning in William Stafford's poetry. This is largely due to my primary interest of study being religion for the past seven years through college and seminary. For better or worse, I tend to find religious and spiritual truths in many places within the culture I live in, especially art and language.

If you've read much of William Stafford's poetry, you may have noticed he mentions religious and spiritual themes, but they are not often the main focus of his work. Stafford grew up attending various Protestant churches, and later came under the influence of Quakerism and Anabaptism. But for most of his life he lived in Oregon, one of the most secular places in America. As far as I know, he was not highly involved in any religious institution for very long; he generally shunned institutions. But he also had a keen sensibility that allowed him to intuit many spiritual truths.

His pacifism is perhaps the best known incarnation of his religious stance. When he spoke to his draft board in World War Two, he told them he learned in church that it was wrong to kill, and he was believed to be sincere enough to perform alternative service, working for the government in manual labor camps instead of donning a uniform and picking up a gun.

A lot of attention has been paid to Stafford's writings on peace, including a collection of poems and essays, and a documentary film based upon the collection, both works entitled "Every War Has Two Losers." Interestingly enough, not much has been said about Stafford's religious and spiritual writings. Generally he is thought to have been secular, though I wonder if he fell more along the the lines of secular Christianity, that is, believing basic principles of the faith, while not making a distinction between religious and nonreligious realms of culture. He was asked in a 1993 interview with The Paris Review if he considered himself a Christian poet. Here is his response:

I might describe myself as a religious poet whose vocabulary, reference points, and surrounding culture are phrased in Christian terms. I think I would be whatever religion there was in the society around me; it’s not the local content of the religion that possesses me, but the general attitude, the way of living that recognizes more than we know.

I have begun to read critics' views on Stafford to find what others readers have found in his work that hints toward some spiritual stance, and have found that many call him a mystic but almost always qualify it by explaining that his poems are rooted in the daily world. Stafford, then, was not interested in transcending the world, but entering into it to find "more than what we know." I have also started to identify poems and essays by Stafford that say something of his religious and spiritual views. I am also interested in researching these questions in the Stafford archives in Portland, Oregon and interviewing scholars and writers who may be familiar with this aspect of his work. Possible outcomes could be an anthology of Stafford's writings on spirituality and religion with an introduction, or a book length essay. I will see what possibilities arise. For now, I will keep reading.

Public Viewing of Stafford Film March 27 in Richmond, Indiana

Bethany Theological Seminary (Richmond, IN) will host a public viewing of the new film on Stafford, Every War Has Two Losers, Saturday March 27 at 7pm. View more info here.

new film on stafford & war

"Every War Has Two Losers" tells the story of how one man, William Stafford (1914-1993), choose to answer the call to war. It is a story of confronting beliefs that swirl around war - Isn't war inevitable? Even necessary? What about the enemy? Stafford refused to fight in World War Two and served four years in camps for conscientious objectors.

--from the film's website.

On the same day I found a video online about poetry and war, The Stafford Archives posted a link to the newly released documentary on William Stafford's writings on war. The film is entitled "Every Was Has Two Losers," the same name as the book that collected WS's writings on peace and war.

The film is directed by Haydn Reiss. The website can be found at everywar.com.

Poets and writers featured in the film include Coleman Barks, Robert Bly, John Gorka, Maxine Hong Kingston, Michael Meade, M.S. Merwin, Naomi Shihab Nye, Kim Stafford, and Alice Walker. Even if you've never heard of William Stafford, it would be worth to see the film just for these great voices.

If the film is anything like the trailer, it should be pretty good. I'm hoping to get my hands on a copy of the dvd sometime, so check back to this blog in the next couple months for a review.

For now, here's the trailer.

Committing Poetry In A Time Of War

Here's a film not about Stafford, but one he would certainly find interest in. "Committing Poetry In A Time Of War" tells of poets speaking out against the war in Iraq during the Bush administration and attempts to control these dissenting voices.

archives unveil new website

The William Stafford Archives just went public with a new website at williamstaffordarchives.org.

As of this posting, WS's first two books, West Of Your City and Traveling Through The Dark have been entirely digitized, including book pages, early drafts and typescripts, and audio files for each poem. The site also has archival videos of WS reading poems, plus photos of the poet. Tools for teaching and research are also planned.

Book Collecting & 'Traveling Through The Dark'

I've done some research into the copy of Traveling Through The Dark I found at my local used bookstore, and found that it is not a first edition. According to First Editions of Today and How to Tell Them (4th ed., by Wanda Underhill, Berkeley, CA: Peacock Press, 1965), Harper & Row placed the words "First Edition" on the verso (copyright page) of books printed in letterpress. I confirmed that the book was printed with letterpress by the presence of ligatures, or joined characters, a common practice in letterpress to save space and ink.

While these aren't very clear, here is a scan of ligatures from the poem "Elegy" (page 13)--the "f" connected to the next letter in the words "cornfield" and "flower".






And here is the verso, which lacks any mention of the book being a first edition or first printing.





While it would be nice to own a first edition of Stafford's first book to be printed by a major press and the winner of the National Book Award, this volume is in very good condition, and likely worth more than the very reasonable purchase price. But the literary value of the poems themselves is the most rewarding.

to open this book is to spread the curtains wide

I've been pretty busy, and haven't been able to give much time to reading poetry, let alone Stafford. But then yesterday, Stafford came up in a conversation with a friend who knows of my interest in his work. The syllabus for a seminary class this friend and I will be taking together in the fall suggests WS as a possible author to research and present on as a theopoet--a writer whose work engages the imagination and reveals the divine that is within and around all of our daily living. After our conversation, I pulled "The Way It Is" off the shelf for the first time this summer, and happily started reading again. Then just as I begin to think of WS again, he enters my world in an even more tangible, and exciting way.

As I was running errands today in downtown Richmond, Indiana, I thought I'd go browse my local used bookstore. I wasn't planning on making any purchases, but was just interested to see what was there, and if anything new came in I might find worthwhile. I spent my usual five or ten minutes in the religion section, then stepped over to the poetry books. I always check first for any work by Stafford, even though the store owner said he didn't ever sell any Stafford when I had asked a few years back. It's rare that my Stafford searches are successful, but today, my eyes fell on a copy of Traveling Through The Dark, Stafford's 1962 National Book Award winner. The store owner said, jokingly I think, that he might raise the price if I kept saying how amazing of a find it was, so I bought it quickly.

When I got home, I did some looking around online, and found a signed first edition in fine condition for $450. There's no direct evidence that my copy is a first edition (I still need to do some more research on the book and publisher), and the condition is not quite fine (though my untrained eye says it's pretty close), but I would think it would be worth more than the four dollars I payed for it. Whatever it's worth, it's now sitting on my shelf with my growing Stafford collection, but it's too valuable in other ways to just sit there unappreciated. Before I got the book I had read most of the poems in the book in other places, but as I read the title poem from those 1962 pages today, it was a completely new experience. Here's what I wrote soon after I got home from the store.

Upon Finding “Traveling Through The Dark”
by Travis Poling

To open this book is to spread the curtains wide
in the middle of the day; reading
“Traveling Through The Dark” brings
as much light into the room, eyes opening
to images and brightness of what is most real
but barely seen. The yellowed pages
of the first printing years ago is daylight pushing out past
the bookstore two miles away, into my house as I rise early—
this sun calls me to its bright source. In the store I read
of messengers and premonitions, then return the book of angels
to its slot between prayer and scripture, turn again, and step
to the stacks of poetry, scanning the named edges
beside the window.

I happened to find two new sites from the Stafford Archives today as well, William Stafford Archives blog, and StaffordArchives.org.

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.

Linking up

UPDATE January 13, 2011 You may have noticed News From Nowhere has been discontinued for a little while. It seems Mark as decided to move on to other projects. Best wishes, Mark. The site will be certainly missed.
===

Thanks to Mark Mitchell, creator of News From Nowhere, a site of poetry and visual art with a large emphasis on Stafford. From now on, whenever folks surf to his page of Stafford's poetry (currently the sixth highest ranked site on Google for the search term "William Stafford") they will find a link to this blog (listed as "Travis Poling blog") and the William Stafford Fan Club on Facebook!

Hopefully this marks only the beginning of clear signals across the deep darkness that is so often the internet.

Reviews of 'Encountering Stafford'

A running list of comments, emails and reviews regarding this site:

I surely share your appreciation of Stafford's work and life, and I like what you're doing with this blog.
--comment from poet Jeff Gundy, Bluffton University

An insightful new blog entitled Encountering William Stafford. Reminds me a little of Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet but from the perspective of the young poet.
--News From Nowhere's links page

My wife and two close friends of ours are studying William's work as a way of furthering our own consciousness and living from a place of integrity. We are enjoying this process immensely. We are considerably older than you so it would nice to have a 28 year old viewpoint in our discussions.
--email from Ronald L. Riffel, Sarasota, FL

I am a poet and a Mennonite...I have heard of William Stafford, but did not know he was 'Christian', much less pacifist...Your blog clarified the connection between Stafford and pacifism; that is the Brethren... Now that I know...Mr. William Stafford shall be my next babtism by immersion.
--email from Daniel Foote, Bethany, OK

I have briefly looked over your blog and look forward to spending more time with it. I have a dear poet friend with whom I read sometimes and it will be fun to show her your enthusiasm for Stafford. I'm looking forward to learning more about this admired poet through you.
--email from Sue Hanson, Poulsbo, WA