tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60029910080025879432024-03-05T11:32:11.150-08:00William Stafford Archives BlogA blog to announce ongoing developments at the William Stafford Archives and to receive reader commentaries.
This blog is set up so that anyone can post a comment. Just click on the comments link, type your message, and select a profile. Unless you have a gmail account, we recommend that you select the Name/URL option. This allows you type in your name and provide an address for your own website if you like. Once you have selected your profile, please preview your comment and then post.William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-40619036191486686742013-05-21T14:38:00.000-07:002013-05-22T09:24:12.625-07:00New Photographs of Stafford and Friends During the 1950s<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz_orXNdFu83oWgkKQ5p2-DM63afa8c3N-2FgJrSNeLLVELqvzIAK478NEcoBfdvUZZwzezGUcUH8yDOyGGZ7Kx2s4XatiTB1PnVOsZD01Ih1Mpd8x4ewYr4om2pz4w42EiBvCdDUP9IUC/s1600/1958.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz_orXNdFu83oWgkKQ5p2-DM63afa8c3N-2FgJrSNeLLVELqvzIAK478NEcoBfdvUZZwzezGUcUH8yDOyGGZ7Kx2s4XatiTB1PnVOsZD01Ih1Mpd8x4ewYr4om2pz4w42EiBvCdDUP9IUC/s400/1958.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kenny Johnson, William Stafford, and Bob Dusenbery <br />
at Mt. Jefferson, 1958. Kenny Johnson Collection.</td></tr>
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During the past few years the staff at the Lewis & Clark Special Collections have been processing William Stafford's immense collection of photographs (over 16,000 images). Most of these photos were taken by Stafford during his travels to poetry readings and writing workshops. The collection also includes various images of Stafford taken by other photographers. As one would expect, the bulk of these photographs were taken after 1963 when Stafford was awarded the National Book Award for <i>Traveling through the Dark. </i><br />
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Recently, Lewis & Clark received a gift that fills in some important gaps in the visual documentation of Stafford's life during the 1950s and early 1960s. Steve Johnson, the son of Stafford's close friend Kenny Johnson donated a small collection of slides that feature Stafford and the families of some of his closest friends including the Johnsons, Dusenberys, and Paulys. The image above shows Kenny Johnson, William Stafford, and Bob Dusenbery during a trip to Mt. Jefferson in 1958. The three men first became friends in 1948 when Stafford was hired to teach at Lewis & Clark College. The photo above hints at the intellectual camaraderie that the three shared throughout their lives. Scholars interested in Stafford's correspondence might be surprised at the lack of letters to other poets that include substantive intellectual discussions. The obvious explanation for this absence is that Stafford reserved this kind of discourse for his closest friends and colleagues in Portland. Stafford's correspondence with Kenny Johnson provides striking examples of the candor and intellectual banter between the two (the finding aid for this collection can be viewed at: <a href="http://nwda.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv55599/">http://nwda.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv55599/</a>). Lewis & Clark College is excited to have this new slice of documentary evidence of Stafford's life during this period.<br />
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<i>Jeremy Skinner</i><br />
<i>Special Collections Librarian, Lewis & Clark College </i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqLlx8_FWyxxjGsrWwobcIyMJqD-ZtGWNRHFaTkIu0i7QdbRVvLgctkqQ2HM70Nw0hfV-ksZkHtAVY7Dti-OsMwSiDMUgm07Hwmc_Qds_TrLbwcRvlarhagOts2JxFnZMWdEx6q3MV-ZW0/s1600/tv2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqLlx8_FWyxxjGsrWwobcIyMJqD-ZtGWNRHFaTkIu0i7QdbRVvLgctkqQ2HM70Nw0hfV-ksZkHtAVY7Dti-OsMwSiDMUgm07Hwmc_Qds_TrLbwcRvlarhagOts2JxFnZMWdEx6q3MV-ZW0/s320/tv2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photographs of a television broadcast on Portland's KATU station
featuring Lewis & Clark English Department members. Top image
(left to right):
William Lucht, Kenny Johnson, and Bob Dusenbery. Bottom image (left to
right): Bob Dusenbery, William Stafford, and Ted Braun. The broadcast
was a special Christmas poetry reading in 1963. Kenny Johnson
Collection.</td></tr>
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<i> </i>William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-4233873613760458102013-03-12T16:24:00.003-07:002013-03-14T19:39:43.359-07:00“I like flat country” and “I hate precious poets;” How William Stafford and Charles Bukowski once met<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><br /></i></span><i><span style="font-size: small;">An archives research project by Jessica Alberg, <br />Lewis & Clark College class of 2013</span></i><br />
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The room is hushed, candles line the isles of folded chairs and the light on the stage is strong so all attention lies on the man at the podium. He is in the middle of one of his poems when he pauses, takes off his glasses and looks up at his audience: "Do you ever get the feeling" he begins "that you'd go fucking mad doing a thing like this...maybe I will." The audience bursts into laughter.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXy8PeyIoSSLshxcHP43JAE2z2J3j78W3G251jLkJCyGM1pPCzE_JKSxlJsCmk_uIO13eEWp7Opy-WBWp55Lons_9hZD_16eB_TxyRVM6EIF0Hm1HkC8Ofeh65lx-d3Jq1lUmgTNHLQCym/s1600/-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXy8PeyIoSSLshxcHP43JAE2z2J3j78W3G251jLkJCyGM1pPCzE_JKSxlJsCmk_uIO13eEWp7Opy-WBWp55Lons_9hZD_16eB_TxyRVM6EIF0Hm1HkC8Ofeh65lx-d3Jq1lUmgTNHLQCym/s400/-2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photograph of Charles Bukowski by William Stafford</td></tr>
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This is the poet Charles Bukowski during a joint reading where he and William Stafford presented poetry at the San Francisco Museum of Art at 7:30 pm on December 6th, 1973. Kathleen Fraser, director of the Poetry Center and the planner of this event explained her reasoning for placing these two together: "I like to hear different voices, different kinds of energies...People would see Stafford who otherwise would never have heard of him, and Bukowski would be introduced to a whole new group of people who would not have come just to see him alone." It was, without a doubt, an event charged on opposition. The event, Fraser later described "...was a mistake" and many considered the event to do incredible injustice to William Stafford. But while many in the audience considered it a mistake, Stafford and Bukowski may have thought otherwise.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX4yBrJqj-0DfNxFVHNuuuzshJZXVgWN8TvaOVCYNP6mjKbRWUUPerNQeqYr2Wc72aRqE5ChDJDTiL2JCfTJf5270ne4VHhimTb4Yfj6x7itCt-Cq9WbOkUwtfA7lMN6i5kbbcs5im8RYX/s1600/image168.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="330" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX4yBrJqj-0DfNxFVHNuuuzshJZXVgWN8TvaOVCYNP6mjKbRWUUPerNQeqYr2Wc72aRqE5ChDJDTiL2JCfTJf5270ne4VHhimTb4Yfj6x7itCt-Cq9WbOkUwtfA7lMN6i5kbbcs5im8RYX/s400/image168.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A review of the event by the newsletter "Poetry Flash Eleven" </td></tr>
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William Stafford is considered to be a very accessible poet, one whose
poetry is able to touch and be touched by a wide variety of people. "William Stafford is a poet of understatement" commented one reviewer of the event. During the event, Bukowski drank from an orange juice bottle containing more vodka than juice, mocked Stafford, and while Stafford read, the Bukowski groupies of the audience hissed at him. Bukowski attempted to insult Stafford during the event by insinuate that he was soft: "Has he fainted yet?" "Should I do as Mr. Stafford does and say: 'I have two more poems left?' [takes a drink] I'm just a nasty born drunk I can't help myself." Why insult the person whom you have agreed to read with? Bukowski answers this at the beginning of the reading: "I hate precious poets and I hate precious audiences too. They destroy each other." <br />
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Yet, as readers of William Stafford's poetry, we know that the irony of a Bukowski and Stafford reading was not lost on Stafford, at one point he remarked: "Understanding the nature of tonight's reading, I have brought my very tamest poem." He went on to read "Passing Remark":<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> In scenery I like flat country.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> In life I don't like much to happen.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> In personalities I like mild colorless people.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> And in colors I prefer gray and brown.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> My wife, a vivid girl from the mountains,</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> says, "Then why did you choose me?"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> Mildly I lower my brown eyes--</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> there are so many things admirable people do not understand.</span><br />
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Stafford did not come unprepared to the Bukowski reading--he knew what he was getting himself into. His response to the wild and crazy nature of Bukowski was to bring his tamest poem. Something which, maybe unrecognized by the Bukowski fans, was a bold move. This poem, and the context in which it was presented, are bold because Stafford is choosing to do the opposite of what is happening--he is taking the harder path by creating more distinction between himself and Bukowski. "In life I don't like much to happen/ In personalities I like mild colorless people"--these lines seem to address Bukowski's idea, that those who are extravagant and untamed are more interesting than those who are subtle, "precious" or mild. It is easy to appreciate the mountains, it is not as easy to appreciate the flat country. "There are so many things admirable people do not understand." Stafford ends his poem in a way which speaks to more than the mildness of "colorless" people. There is something inside these people that, because they are mild, allows them to better admire what is vivid, what is appropriately admirable. They are picky in what they choose because they see the vivid maybe more clearly than those who do not appreciate the simplistic. In September 1980 Stafford received a letter from a farmer named John Budan,
who opened his letter by remarking that he had seen Stafford: "I saw
you in person once, in San Francisco and it was sad because you read
poems with Charles Bukowski who was very insulting."
Stafford not only touched they city dwellers of San Francisco during this
reading, but as well a farmer who had come into town. That he was able
to touch someone during a reading considered a "theater event" by some
of the critics means that Stafford had a strong voice and though he
did not have the the flamboyant and crazy attitude of Bukowski, Bukowski
was not able to shadow Stafford. Bukowski drank a bottle of screwdrivers but Stafford stayed sober and managed not to lose control of a daft event. In a letter to Stafford from Fraser after the event, Fraser stated: "You are most generous regarding a most unusual, unexpected and, for me, overwhelming EVENT..." Stafford also read a poem he included in his book, <i>Writing the Australian Crawl</i>.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> We’d have an old car, the kind that gets<br /> flat tires, but inside would be wolfskin<br /> on the seats and warm fur on the steering<br /> wheel, and wolf fur on all the buttons. And<br /> we’d live in a ranch house made out of<br /> logs with a loft where you sleep, and you’d<br /> walk a little ways and there’d be the farm<br /> with the horses. We’d drive to town, and<br /> we’d have flat tires, and be sort of old.</span> <br />
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Another, seemingly, mild poem about mild people.<br />
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Stafford wrote to Bukowski four days after the event. His letter is surprising but speaks to his character.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZTeSITrioJUm51pnaodoSGKZY6tekXhUCw7lSuvXXTM4zMy_Ak-B952Yo1m9d6oidm96tINVBgntFpZyCQvri2-JJk7wuO62y7eYShUP0mHApIc-RqZokRnppA0bbI2o74cNgybAAsUVg/s1600/image160.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZTeSITrioJUm51pnaodoSGKZY6tekXhUCw7lSuvXXTM4zMy_Ak-B952Yo1m9d6oidm96tINVBgntFpZyCQvri2-JJk7wuO62y7eYShUP0mHApIc-RqZokRnppA0bbI2o74cNgybAAsUVg/s400/image160.jpg" width="310" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stafford letter to Bukowski</td></tr>
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Stafford's letter is simple but respectable. His description of the scene is: "...a swirl" as if the whole situation was overflowing, mixed up--a whirlpool of activity and event. It is what one would use in place of the word "blur." When Stafford is finally able to see clearly, Bukowski is gone (which may indicate that he was mixing and swirling the room). As well, it is clear that Bukowski took Stafford by some surprise by leaving before saying something: "I didn't think I'd miss a chance to meet a partner in a joint reading." His next paragraph, about the blurred picture is quite interesting as well. "I blame the lighting" is a reference to the candle light, which is highly problematic for someone attempting to take a photo. Stafford then does the polite thing of offering to Bukowski his favorite poem by him, a very polite and normal gesture. However, he also adds that he got it put into an anthology. Now the gesture has gone from merely one of politeness, to one in which he shows honest enjoyment for Bukowski's work. A high compliment indeed. His final note: "Good luck." is maybe most telling of all. This simple
statement is almost warm--it seems to indicate a sense of compassion.<br />
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Charles Bukowski replied almost a month later.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bukowski letter to Stafford</td></tr>
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Bukowski's letter is truly opposite Stafford's letter, which is apparent from the first sentence: "You show excellent style in contacting the enemy." While in Stafford's first paragraph he calls Bukowski a "partner," Bukowski calls himself William Stafford's "enemy." But this is not with the intent of ill will, but rather just a funny way Bukowski saw it. Most of Bukowski's letter is hard to decipher, and takes great patience. But there are a two moments that, with regards to William Stafford, must be pulled out. The first is in Bukowski's second paragraph:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> ...what those in the poetry audience misunderstand...what those who rail against me and cheer you--we are both, somehow, on the same side, and that kindness is knowing whatever we can know and to put it down in the light of seeing. you say it one way, I say it another. but all we are asking is a chance to live. To live with blue slippers on our feet and sausages cooking over some flame. we don't even ask love. we are wiser than that.</span><br />
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What Bukowski points to here is something Stafford speaks to often in his poetry: The Truth, honesty, the poet recognizing the feeling of something and being able to follow it. A poet is honest when someone else would have been nice. As well, Bukowski is returning to his idea that while he and Stafford are "enemies," they are also on the same side by putting the truth into the light so that the audience can see it. What the audience cannot see is Bukowski and Stafford's connection. These poets are more connected than we as readers can seemingly see.<br />
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Bukowski's final paragraph seems to reveal to Stafford a very personal side: "it's just as well we hadn't met. I do things stupid. I am powerful but I am frightened," Bukowski says. This seems to be the most honest line of the letter. It was quite common for people say that they revealed to William Stafford things they never thought they would say, and it seems as if Bukowski was also pushed to say something. Right after this note he launches into made up words and strange sentences, and becomes impossible to understand--as if the moment before was too much. And of course, one cannot leave the letter without noticing the handwritten notes on the side and the drawings, no more than one can go without noticing that Bukowski has spelled his first name wrong. All things that seem to describe Bukowski, even from his signature introduced with merely a "yes" which was not a way he normally signed. It is not quite clear what the "yes" refers to, if it is to the "thank you for writing me" or to something in Stafford's own letter, such as the "good luck."<br />
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Both poets wrote honest letters, letters that were completely reflective of their character. Their letters not only show the difference between them, but also show the similarity between the poets. These letters, and this poetry reading, show us the connection of poets. How they, never mind what we as an audience think, "...[are] both, somehow, on the same side...[and] knowing whatever [they] can know...put it down in the light of seeing."<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/gbpnfIoQz-E" width="420"></iframe><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">This is a video of Bukowski reading at the 1973 San Francisco event. It contains feed of almost every moment he is on stage. There is no surviving video of Stafford's portion of the reading. </span><br />
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William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-6412605511067722622013-02-21T08:52:00.000-08:002013-02-28T12:42:43.904-08:00New William Stafford Bibliography Available for Pre-Order<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In August of 2012, Lewis & Clark College Special Collections staff completed the compilation and editorial work for the first comprehensive bibliography of the publications of William Stafford. This was a landmark achievement for our staff. Based on nearly fifty years of research began by James W. Pirie in the 1960s, the 544-page book provides bibliographic information for all known editions of Stafford's books, translations, editorial work, broadsides, serial publications, appearances in anthologies, archival collections, and a listing of major criticism. The book also includes a 100-page index of every poem title, book title, name, and publisher that appears in the bibliography.<br />
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This book is a must-have for Stafford scholars and anyone doing work in the Stafford Archives. Oak Knoll Press has announced that the book will ship in March 2013. If you would like to pre-order your copy, go to: <a href="http://www.oakknoll.com/detail.php?d_booknr=110070">http://www.oakknoll.com/detail.php?d_booknr=110070</a>.<br />
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Special thanks is due to Robert Miller for his permission to use his
stunning previously unpublished portrait of Stafford for the book
jacket.<br />
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<i>Jeremy Skinner</i><br />
<i>Assistant Archivist, Lewis & Clark College</i><br />
<i>Managing Editor for William Stafford: An Annotated Bibliography </i> <br />
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<br />William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-27744393957826902092013-02-21T08:49:00.001-08:002013-02-21T08:49:16.771-08:00An Update on Work in the William Stafford ArchivesThe staff at the William Stafford Archives at Lewis & Clark College have neglected this blog for the past year while we have been working hard to finish a number of massive cataloging projects. While we apologize for our absence, we are happy to announce that most of our major projects are complete and all of our new Stafford research tools are accessible to the public.<br />
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Key among these new tools is the soon-to-be-released Stafford bibliography (<a href="http://williamstaffordarchives.blogspot.com/2013/02/new-william-stafford-bibliography.html">see this posting about the book</a>). Additionally, the entire 130 linear foot research collection is now searchable and browsable through online finding aids at the <a href="http://www.williamstaffordarchives.org/research/">Stafford Archives website</a>. The organizational chart for the entire collection can be seen below. </div>
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We look forward to seeing you in the archives.</div>
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<i>Jeremy Skinner</i></div>
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<i>Assistant Archivist, Lewis & Clark College </i> </div>
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<i><b><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Series 1: Drafts, 1937-1993</span></b></i></div>
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<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 1: Daily Writings, 1950-1993</span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 2: Travel Journals, 1952-1992 </span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"></span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 3: Documentary Copies, 1937-1993 </span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"></span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -.1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 4: Prose, 1937-1993 </span><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -.1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"></span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 5: Writings for Public Readings and Workshops, 1960-1993 </span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"></span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 6: Stafford’s Translations of Other Authors, 1962-1992</span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"> </span>
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</ul>
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<b><i><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Series 2: Professional Engagements, 1959-1993</span></i></b></div>
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<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 1: Appointment Books, 1959-1993 </span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -.1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 2: Promotional Materials and
Conference Programs, 1950-1993</span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"> </span>
</li>
</ul>
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<b><i><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Series 3:
Correspondence, 1958-2010</span></i></b></div>
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<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 1: General Correspondence, 1958-1993 </span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 2: Correspondence with Publishers, 1958-2010 </span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"></span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 3: Civilian Public Service Correspondence, 1930s-1947</span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"> </span>
</li>
</ul>
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<i><b><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Series 4: Photographs, 1880-1993</span></b></i></div>
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<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 1: Negatives of Photographs by William Stafford, 1966-1993 </span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"></span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 2: Prints of Photographs by William Stafford, 1960-1993 </span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -.1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 3: Stafford Family Photographs,
1880-1993 </span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 4: Photographs of William Stafford, 1920-1993</span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"> </span>
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</ul>
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<i><b><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Series 5: Audio & Video, 1950-2012</span></b></i></div>
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<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 1: Video Footage of William Stafford, 1966-2011</span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"></span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 2: Audio Recordings of William Stafford, 1963-1993 </span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 3: Musical Settings to William Stafford Poetry, 1950-2012</span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"></span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 4: Audio Recordings of Others Reading Stafford’s Poems,
1976-2009</span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"> </span>
</li>
</ul>
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<i><b><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Series 6: Teaching Materials, 1950-1993</span></b></i></div>
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<ul>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 1: Syllabi and Handouts, 1950-1978 </span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 2: Teaching Notecards, 1950-1993 </span></li>
</ul>
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<i><b><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Series 7: Artifacts, 1943-1993</span></b></i></div>
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<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 1: Artifacts Owned by Stafford, 1943-1993</span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"> </span>
</li>
</ul>
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<i><b><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Series 8: Publications, 1938-2012 </span></b></i></div>
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<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 1: Books by Stafford in English, 1946-2012 </span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 2: Books with Contributions by Stafford, 1947-2012 </span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 3: Periodicals with Contributions by Stafford in English,
1938-2012 </span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"></span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 4: Broadsides Featuring Stafford, 1959-2012 </span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 5: Translations of Stafford, 1970-2011 </span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"></span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 6: Criticism of Stafford, 1957-1911</span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 7: One-of-a-Kind Art Books, 2011 </span></li>
</ul>
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<i><b><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Series 9: Pacifism, 1939-2006</span></b></i></div>
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<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 1: Pacifism Publications, 1939-1968 </span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 2: Civilian Public Service Subject Files, 1942-2006</span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"> </span>
</li>
</ul>
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<i><b><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Series 10: William Stafford Biographical, 1950-2012</span></b></i></div>
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<ul>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 1: Biographical Clippings, 1950-2011 </span>
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"> </span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 2: General Biographical, 1950-2012</span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"> </span></li>
</ul>
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<i><b><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Series 11: Stafford Archives Administrative Files, 1998-2012</span></b></i></div>
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<li><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"></span><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -.1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro-It; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;">Sub-Series 1: Topical Files, 1998-2012 </span><span style="color: black; letter-spacing: -.1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: GaramondPremrPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;"></span>
</li>
</ul>
William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-57733285143586823332011-03-24T10:51:00.000-07:002011-03-25T12:14:12.010-07:00Japanese Students Illustrate "Malheur before Dawn"Barbara Schramm writes: <div><br />Each year during their January interim I facilitate a three-day workshop with 30-35 Japanese students in the Academy of International Education program based in Osaka, Japan. These students are enrolled at St. Martin’s University and Pierce Community College in Lacy, WA. Students vary in their English speaking proficiency. One of the 5th year students acts as our translator.<br /><br />In 2010, with encouragement and guidance from Paul Merchant, we worked with four William Stafford poems: “A Ritual To Read To Each Other,” “Ask Me,” “A Valley Like This” and “For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid.” You may review this work on Lewis & Clark College’s William Stafford Archives website (blog of February 25, 2010, under “Information”).<br /><br />This year we worked with “Malheur Before Dawn” using the following reflection questions: Write about the title, what does it seem to prefigure? How does it work to assist the ideas of the poem? Choose one line from the poem and respond to it: What are your associations with it? What does it remind you of? What question does it ask or answer? Why did you choose this line? Which one word is at the heart or core of this poem? If you had to choose one word to represent the entire poem, which would it be? Explain your choice.<br /><br />Students work in groups of four, writing individual responses then discussing in their small group followed by full group discussion. The students were asked ahead of time to bring a poem of their own choosing, including a short biography of the poet. We discussed these poems also and compared ideas from their excellent selections to those expressed in “Malheur Before Dawn”. We tied these ideas to Ekhart Tolle’s New Earth, a book they’d been required to read this summer during their annual 30 -day retreat in Hokkaido.<br /><br />On the third day the students drew a “wood cut” illustrating the one line they’d chosen from “Malheur Before Dawn”. I’d shown them on a large screen Michael Spafford’s wood cuts illustrating Wallace Stevens’ s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”, two wood cuts for each of the thirteen stanzas. Particular drawing paper and pens were selected in advance with advice from Art Media.<br /><br />One of the students, Seijun Kanazawa, translated “Malheur Before Dawn” from English into Japanese. This is a student who is learning English as his second language! Hirotsugu Kawai, Miho Harada and Yosuki Oi, and a group of students from Steilacoom Hall wrote their own responses to “Malheur” in English.<br /><br />The Directors of the program say that they’re amazed at the language learning that takes place during these three days.<br /><br />My thanks to Paul Merchant for encouraging this project, Ann Staley for her help with the focused free-write questions, and to Takuya Otani, Director for his endless patience and good humor in coordinating all the details.<br /><br />The students in this program were:<br /><br />Shuhei Nagashima, Masato Nishida, Masaaki Hasegawa, Seijun Kanazawa. Takeshi Ono, Takanori Ito, Akira Oishi, Ikue Nomura, Miho Harada, Kyoko Shimozono, Yuma Kanai, Yosuke Oi, Ryota Mizutani, Tetsuya Yonetsu, Eriko Nekomoto, Mayumi Iwata, Takashi Fujii, Yuki Kato, Yasuyuki Shimada, Takuya Hashimoto, Hirofumi Kuroda, Maki Endo, Ayumi Mikuriya, Yuki Otsuki, Kaoru Fujita, Kokoro Iwano, Koshiro Ueda, Takumi Iizuka, Atsuhito Sekiya, Shingo Kojima, Ryoko Wada, Hiroko Momose, Kimiko Hakomori, Hirotsugu Kawai, So Sato, Makoto Yuasa.<br /><br /><br />Barbara Schramm, MA<br /><br />Paul Merchant comments: </div><div><br /></div><div>This project resulted in a remarkable collection of illustrations of "Malheur before Dawn," responding to almost every word of the poem. The poem and illustrations are reproduced here, together with a translation of the poem into Japanese by one of the students.<br /><br />Here is the poem, “Malheur before Dawn,” by William Stafford. It was first collected in <i>Holding onto the Grass</i> (Honeybrook Press, 1992), and reprinted in <i>Even in Quiet Places</i> (Confluence Press, 1996) and <i>The Way It Is</i> (Graywolf Press, 1998):<br /><br />Malheur Before Dawn<br /><br />An owl sound wandered along the road with me.<br />I didn’t hear it—I breathed it into my ears.<br /><br />Little ones at first, the stars retired, leaving<br />polished little circles on the sky for awhile.<br /><br />Then the sun began to shout from below the horizon.<br />Throngs of birds campaigned, their music a tent of sound.<br /><br />From across a pond, out of the mist,<br />one drake made a V and said its name.<br /><br />Some vast animal of sound began to rouse<br />from the reeds and lean outward.<br /><br />Frogs discovered their national anthem again.<br />I didn’t know a ditch could hold so much joy.<br /><br />So magic a time it was that I was both brave and afraid.<br />Some day like this might save the world.<br /><br /> William Stafford</div><div><br /></div><div>Here is Seijun Kanazawa's translation of the poem into Japanese:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmhjJb4xIY-pflkdIdA5Xn2-cN-V2QxIYph_o6Mz7zBEKZGAMCj2UVu-6Ef8XIrFlmWjgf8_imkgZaMx-6qMsDYFUAKNRlzovQEjU1637Km-W6Fl5PuQQ4Cqtp6UbeLCrbiABXLr4N8ebB/s1600/Malheur+2.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 399px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmhjJb4xIY-pflkdIdA5Xn2-cN-V2QxIYph_o6Mz7zBEKZGAMCj2UVu-6Ef8XIrFlmWjgf8_imkgZaMx-6qMsDYFUAKNRlzovQEjU1637Km-W6Fl5PuQQ4Cqtp6UbeLCrbiABXLr4N8ebB/s400/Malheur+2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5587710447624652162" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Ryota Mizutani and Makoto Yuasa illustrated the first two couplets of the poem. Ryota's drawing has a splendid difference in scale between the owl and the listening poet, and Makoto has done something very imaginative in making the night sky a reflection of the dawn sky:</div><div><br /></div><div>An owl sound wandered along the road with me.</div><div>I didn't hear it—I breathed it into my ears.</div><div><br /></div><div>Little ones at first, the stars retired, leaving</div><div>polished little circles on the sky for awhile.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmhjJb4xIY-pflkdIdA5Xn2-cN-V2QxIYph_o6Mz7zBEKZGAMCj2UVu-6Ef8XIrFlmWjgf8_imkgZaMx-6qMsDYFUAKNRlzovQEjU1637Km-W6Fl5PuQQ4Cqtp6UbeLCrbiABXLr4N8ebB/s1600/Malheur+2.jpg"></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5N_k5VWmsKsZkL60ooFG9T7NDEy3lcvOWaGHhF1o30RgNgQRPOH4WVQrRWOKscyS4EdnwKKaUAjKdohkbRpkBGsUQFpujiNsU6aMTGVJg264KVYkV2g2EQnq-VDtKUhbWtm7FcjNEPx_i/s1600/Malheur+1.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 287px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5N_k5VWmsKsZkL60ooFG9T7NDEy3lcvOWaGHhF1o30RgNgQRPOH4WVQrRWOKscyS4EdnwKKaUAjKdohkbRpkBGsUQFpujiNsU6aMTGVJg264KVYkV2g2EQnq-VDtKUhbWtm7FcjNEPx_i/s400/Malheur+1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5587713342962963730" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>The next couplet was illustrated by fourteen students. First Maki Endo shows the sun's shout against the darkness:</div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5N_k5VWmsKsZkL60ooFG9T7NDEy3lcvOWaGHhF1o30RgNgQRPOH4WVQrRWOKscyS4EdnwKKaUAjKdohkbRpkBGsUQFpujiNsU6aMTGVJg264KVYkV2g2EQnq-VDtKUhbWtm7FcjNEPx_i/s1600/Malheur+1.jpg"></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVYs1O0BY5ueNngxlB9SVOtjauX-vONfk3TenuPkQ4TCdM2rHJbZsgOwFC8Sez3qT-TcdGBsfsytBWrxc1E9kfZz3R27PF3eLMKm-cfynBnq66JuYrGaWUhpSXObsPKDIFaKa8cQw_hp4G/s1600/Malheur+3.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 380px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVYs1O0BY5ueNngxlB9SVOtjauX-vONfk3TenuPkQ4TCdM2rHJbZsgOwFC8Sez3qT-TcdGBsfsytBWrxc1E9kfZz3R27PF3eLMKm-cfynBnq66JuYrGaWUhpSXObsPKDIFaKa8cQw_hp4G/s400/Malheur+3.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5587713264046096114" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVYs1O0BY5ueNngxlB9SVOtjauX-vONfk3TenuPkQ4TCdM2rHJbZsgOwFC8Sez3qT-TcdGBsfsytBWrxc1E9kfZz3R27PF3eLMKm-cfynBnq66JuYrGaWUhpSXObsPKDIFaKa8cQw_hp4G/s1600/Malheur+3.jpg"></a>Hirofumi Kuroda and Yuki Kato show two different ways of placing the horizon and of showing the relationship of light to dark:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim_ZGCBGEYWo4348QskmjpvJNxmf3jRuYRBgiukygeHjsxDfvIQrwnffy8AZ3E6ZT2xnj85g2EB7yj53hI6h8VHYuE__D4KeozZryLUw0w5YBusWS0C0PLyyavm1yEnbK89KJEu7Nbfmqz/s1600/Malheur+4.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 342px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim_ZGCBGEYWo4348QskmjpvJNxmf3jRuYRBgiukygeHjsxDfvIQrwnffy8AZ3E6ZT2xnj85g2EB7yj53hI6h8VHYuE__D4KeozZryLUw0w5YBusWS0C0PLyyavm1yEnbK89KJEu7Nbfmqz/s400/Malheur+4.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5587713181415233474" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim_ZGCBGEYWo4348QskmjpvJNxmf3jRuYRBgiukygeHjsxDfvIQrwnffy8AZ3E6ZT2xnj85g2EB7yj53hI6h8VHYuE__D4KeozZryLUw0w5YBusWS0C0PLyyavm1yEnbK89KJEu7Nbfmqz/s1600/Malheur+4.jpg"></a>So Sato (top left) takes a long view, while Ryoko Wada enters the landscape more intimately. Yasayuki Shimada and Yuma Kanai (bottom left and right) explore the sunrise itself in two very different ways:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib48T5HttAG8lWPo95eMXgj5_9qnBWlhmqdJtGRZ67JsqlITe3oB_7Sh6yGf_m613azUB0vS8ci9h5ZLrTFOoxXI03-8VnKSXh9waLrFOwzaEE3tMrYUzajJdztcbGISuYzMWfzZvQiuYh/s1600/Malheur+5.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib48T5HttAG8lWPo95eMXgj5_9qnBWlhmqdJtGRZ67JsqlITe3oB_7Sh6yGf_m613azUB0vS8ci9h5ZLrTFOoxXI03-8VnKSXh9waLrFOwzaEE3tMrYUzajJdztcbGISuYzMWfzZvQiuYh/s400/Malheur+5.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5587713055290240370" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib48T5HttAG8lWPo95eMXgj5_9qnBWlhmqdJtGRZ67JsqlITe3oB_7Sh6yGf_m613azUB0vS8ci9h5ZLrTFOoxXI03-8VnKSXh9waLrFOwzaEE3tMrYUzajJdztcbGISuYzMWfzZvQiuYh/s1600/Malheur+5.jpg"></a>Three more sunrises, by Masaaki Hasegawa (left), Shuhei Nagashima (center) and Mayumi Iwata (Right) express the whole range from naturalistic to abstract interpretation:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrQ2s-nH77v0JUxiiPgO_1gndL6vjZJS3u_IDjF9p211Jmz_YDyFbGog43kkZlu-l3XG49mQ81mEtHjXyFbXD_ICQ4yBuBIl-jjA6J96i5ZEYb1JXN-RUlsxXhCQ71ovMUDfzno5H9b61m/s1600/Malheur+6.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 278px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrQ2s-nH77v0JUxiiPgO_1gndL6vjZJS3u_IDjF9p211Jmz_YDyFbGog43kkZlu-l3XG49mQ81mEtHjXyFbXD_ICQ4yBuBIl-jjA6J96i5ZEYb1JXN-RUlsxXhCQ71ovMUDfzno5H9b61m/s400/Malheur+6.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5587712919398834386" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrQ2s-nH77v0JUxiiPgO_1gndL6vjZJS3u_IDjF9p211Jmz_YDyFbGog43kkZlu-l3XG49mQ81mEtHjXyFbXD_ICQ4yBuBIl-jjA6J96i5ZEYb1JXN-RUlsxXhCQ71ovMUDfzno5H9b61m/s1600/Malheur+6.jpg"></a>And now the birds have begun to appear, floating on the lake in Masato Nishida's drawing, or, in Hirotsugu Kawai's interpretation, forming patterns in the sky:</div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8MxeZsrScYFlGSlZpqjQ01-YPzOSrooZtN8i-ehTxS78xX-gp_lpfoBJrGaJIYBFMlgjFQyHu8YNY0g0KUPkYY_3QCsG_EBmvBk2-Cfc6vi78SadsG_YZjtS84xYCeK12WubOlsC05s-T/s1600/Malheur+7.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 176px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8MxeZsrScYFlGSlZpqjQ01-YPzOSrooZtN8i-ehTxS78xX-gp_lpfoBJrGaJIYBFMlgjFQyHu8YNY0g0KUPkYY_3QCsG_EBmvBk2-Cfc6vi78SadsG_YZjtS84xYCeK12WubOlsC05s-T/s400/Malheur+7.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5587712783519962850" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Akira Oishi and Kyoko Shimozono show the shout from behind the horizon itself, and Akira also showed the drake making a V and saying his name. Three students illustrated the following three lines:</div><div><br /></div><div>Throngs of birds campaigned, their music a tent of sound.</div><div><br /></div><div>From across a pond, out of the mist,</div><div>one drake made a V and said his name.</div><div><br /></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8MxeZsrScYFlGSlZpqjQ01-YPzOSrooZtN8i-ehTxS78xX-gp_lpfoBJrGaJIYBFMlgjFQyHu8YNY0g0KUPkYY_3QCsG_EBmvBk2-Cfc6vi78SadsG_YZjtS84xYCeK12WubOlsC05s-T/s1600/Malheur+7.jpg"></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7pnw1P8xRGnrjT_HSttFrgkhfRaN7095UB05vtm5m9lWuLlTIgB2epZQc_tqBNQa4fEGenspNfrySAgJ44vqNoZL_iQu6Fl9mM40l3h8YzcfEwRehbbufEESbd9Nj2Hxqsh0zQ-tEaIs4/s1600/Malheur+8.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 381px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7pnw1P8xRGnrjT_HSttFrgkhfRaN7095UB05vtm5m9lWuLlTIgB2epZQc_tqBNQa4fEGenspNfrySAgJ44vqNoZL_iQu6Fl9mM40l3h8YzcfEwRehbbufEESbd9Nj2Hxqsh0zQ-tEaIs4/s400/Malheur+8.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5587712590752788290" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Miho Harada made music out of the flight of the birds, while Eriko Nekomoto placed the birds in musical patterns on a pine tree:</div><div><br /></div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiw4gzn7npzmmgbhsg97-7ydvQRpi9niU0KWWUT3hIbOARlR_C_mGcI2iIIo1WO8b43fgNAFo0KFaJ5RJDoeXrw-QInAgVuv1qp0AENh95S76AWWlNzKAvWrGYNXhgLbaeE5f34e3JhW6y/s1600/Malheur+9.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiw4gzn7npzmmgbhsg97-7ydvQRpi9niU0KWWUT3hIbOARlR_C_mGcI2iIIo1WO8b43fgNAFo0KFaJ5RJDoeXrw-QInAgVuv1qp0AENh95S76AWWlNzKAvWrGYNXhgLbaeE5f34e3JhW6y/s400/Malheur+9.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5587712522653528738" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>For the next two lines:</div><div><br /></div><div>Some vast animal of air began to rouse</div><div>from the reeds and lean outward.</div><div><br /></div><div>Hiroko Momose placed herself right in the reeds and imagined the vast animal, a lovely piece of understatement:</div><div><br /></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiw4gzn7npzmmgbhsg97-7ydvQRpi9niU0KWWUT3hIbOARlR_C_mGcI2iIIo1WO8b43fgNAFo0KFaJ5RJDoeXrw-QInAgVuv1qp0AENh95S76AWWlNzKAvWrGYNXhgLbaeE5f34e3JhW6y/s1600/Malheur+9.jpg"></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5yKa6nJyRmY1k-GzQbRY2N21PMLN3lYfOa2GbYibE4hZWmA__Y4_ixcaOxIzmYB0z488s3EKSF6M2ho45LXw0qAD863XwGvdB3YN1ldfHZ2SF2LatAe3u3eRiuWp5Yi4Kglv9RKGIaQsT/s1600/Malheur+10.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 259px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5yKa6nJyRmY1k-GzQbRY2N21PMLN3lYfOa2GbYibE4hZWmA__Y4_ixcaOxIzmYB0z488s3EKSF6M2ho45LXw0qAD863XwGvdB3YN1ldfHZ2SF2LatAe3u3eRiuWp5Yi4Kglv9RKGIaQsT/s400/Malheur+10.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5587712443978590274" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5yKa6nJyRmY1k-GzQbRY2N21PMLN3lYfOa2GbYibE4hZWmA__Y4_ixcaOxIzmYB0z488s3EKSF6M2ho45LXw0qAD863XwGvdB3YN1ldfHZ2SF2LatAe3u3eRiuWp5Yi4Kglv9RKGIaQsT/s1600/Malheur+10.jpg"></a>Four students enjoyed the next line:</div><div><br /></div><div>Frogs discovered their national anthem again.</div><div><br /></div><div>Seijun Kanazawa (top left, who also made the translation into Japanese shown earlier) and Takeshi Ono (top right) combine frogs and music, from a distance and close up through a magnifying glass, while Ikue Nomura (bottom left) and Takanori Ito (bottom right) group the frogs amusingly into singing choirs:</div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeEJPi_qNWdxhKB57UUbx1hzj7SFoqf9J5csPLKLBLIGCoxnNfYvCh0Ndjc2cIDRpt56tprHZi-qB44X9NMYp3SBObZodNgAMP9qBsFQIbtzi8WZix0DhcSGE9BDq7GpMe5lYL3eisJJKW/s1600/Malheur+11.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 172px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeEJPi_qNWdxhKB57UUbx1hzj7SFoqf9J5csPLKLBLIGCoxnNfYvCh0Ndjc2cIDRpt56tprHZi-qB44X9NMYp3SBObZodNgAMP9qBsFQIbtzi8WZix0DhcSGE9BDq7GpMe5lYL3eisJJKW/s400/Malheur+11.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5587712043701105122" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyRXrrH9txRguGtc5nrrC0enrj5qh7sF0nm6IPu8mvgTzd7AApi7uOhyV3Fr6cUcz7Gj5dF2nuc8vV-rd24tGVk_f0j5RWGl9ERuahvkIX49KCyXjf65QwRAhakipAt22wvZuOoOSoABMn/s1600/Malheur+12.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 172px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyRXrrH9txRguGtc5nrrC0enrj5qh7sF0nm6IPu8mvgTzd7AApi7uOhyV3Fr6cUcz7Gj5dF2nuc8vV-rd24tGVk_f0j5RWGl9ERuahvkIX49KCyXjf65QwRAhakipAt22wvZuOoOSoABMn/s400/Malheur+12.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5587711897917872530" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyRXrrH9txRguGtc5nrrC0enrj5qh7sF0nm6IPu8mvgTzd7AApi7uOhyV3Fr6cUcz7Gj5dF2nuc8vV-rd24tGVk_f0j5RWGl9ERuahvkIX49KCyXjf65QwRAhakipAt22wvZuOoOSoABMn/s1600/Malheur+12.jpg"></a>Three students, Shingo Kojima (left), Takuya Hashimoto (center), and Yosuke Oi (right) found ways ranging from peaceful landscape through a pattern of frog's heads to a flamboyant ditch of frogs in a forest to express the word joy in the following line:</div><div><br /></div><div>I didn't know a ditch could hold so much joy.</div><div><br /><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8OQ-lKeNJT1buxdGI57e3_XBZsy_q-Ie4cV3vrVO87db2eDpNF4xd2GggpsbcZXSgaLBOU8k4HrBCbAQZYvaZNNlUE2i5nmX0vTo9tY9YZNGOWJaofQ9XzO4Gte8yK_y5NY5up_E1CCRK/s1600/Malheur+13.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 260px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8OQ-lKeNJT1buxdGI57e3_XBZsy_q-Ie4cV3vrVO87db2eDpNF4xd2GggpsbcZXSgaLBOU8k4HrBCbAQZYvaZNNlUE2i5nmX0vTo9tY9YZNGOWJaofQ9XzO4Gte8yK_y5NY5up_E1CCRK/s400/Malheur+13.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5587711662245059570" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8OQ-lKeNJT1buxdGI57e3_XBZsy_q-Ie4cV3vrVO87db2eDpNF4xd2GggpsbcZXSgaLBOU8k4HrBCbAQZYvaZNNlUE2i5nmX0vTo9tY9YZNGOWJaofQ9XzO4Gte8yK_y5NY5up_E1CCRK/s1600/Malheur+13.jpg"></a>William Stafford ends his poem with two ecstatic lines of acceptance and exhilaration:</div><div><br /></div><div>So magic a time it was that I was both brave and afraid.</div><div>Some day like this might save the world.</div><div><br /></div><div>Both Kokoro Iwano (left) and Ayumi Mikuriya (right) respond with appropriately peaceful landscapes:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyiVU7DZ2Nv3kENTf3OVgd7ByHzUFP8C6Z0U-b38pnQ32EHA7s9YVWDtPjdCev_89fREdymsyR6xHD8FKJ842hpq-7pZDqTikc5iRvaySKFrtAJKfB44uMzn_9Eg3OuLXW5rkUdXiJ5_jh/s1600/Malheur+14.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 273px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyiVU7DZ2Nv3kENTf3OVgd7ByHzUFP8C6Z0U-b38pnQ32EHA7s9YVWDtPjdCev_89fREdymsyR6xHD8FKJ842hpq-7pZDqTikc5iRvaySKFrtAJKfB44uMzn_9Eg3OuLXW5rkUdXiJ5_jh/s400/Malheur+14.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5587711577213051842" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyiVU7DZ2Nv3kENTf3OVgd7ByHzUFP8C6Z0U-b38pnQ32EHA7s9YVWDtPjdCev_89fREdymsyR6xHD8FKJ842hpq-7pZDqTikc5iRvaySKFrtAJKfB44uMzn_9Eg3OuLXW5rkUdXiJ5_jh/s1600/Malheur+14.jpg"></a>These illustrations amaze me with their variety, wit, imagination, and presentational skill. </div><div><br /></div><div>At a time of great tragedy in Japan, following the devastating earthquakes and tsunami, it is heartening to experience the sensitivity of these young peoples' responses to William Stafford's poem. We can be both brave and afraid, and I like to think that these students show the way to keep alive a creative spirit: "Some day like this might save the world."</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Paul Merchant, William Stafford Archivist, </div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon<br /><div><br /><br /></div></div></div></div>William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-66973472299798075352011-01-11T11:22:00.000-08:002011-01-11T11:32:36.517-08:00Poem by Ruth CrowleyKim was contacted recently by Molly Fisk, a good friend of our treasured associate Fred Marchant, poet and editor of William Stafford's early poems (<span style="font-style:italic;">Another World Instead</span>). With Fred's encouragement, Molly was sharing a poem by her student Ruth Crowley, written in response to the New York Times obituary heading for William Stafford. <br /><br />Ruth Crowley's poem, a rich and evocative response to the Times's slightly limiting headline, is printed here for the first time with her permission. Our thanks to her, to Molly Fisk, and to Fred Marchant.<br /><br />William Stafford, Noted Regionalist, Dies<br />New York Times, 1993<br /><br />Each morning before dawn he rose<br />to write. He listened to the dark, and what took root<br />was only his. Light hides a lot, he said. He teased <br />large questions from his daily tasks and shied at answers. <br /><br />Not intertextual or urbane, his work<br />feels like plain speech, flat as the Kansas of his birth, <br />but look again how careful and compact, <br />how closely shepherded each word.<br /><br />He fought the war as a CO. The pain of that.<br />Half Crazy Horse, half Gandhi, he sought the wild in us, <br />and in the wild our path. Isolate, who else would ask: <br />is this poem good--for the universe?<br /><br />His region is the space between:<br />hand and hand, sky and ground, mind and mind.William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-34799758839653138092010-09-29T09:22:00.000-07:002010-10-15T13:05:42.010-07:00Erland Anderson Remembers William Stafford<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoBodyText"><i>Poet and academic Erland Anderson , a frequent correspondent with William Stafford from 1975 to 1993, has sent us this memoir of their long association. His reminiscence ends with a revealing comment by William Stafford on his poem "Fifteen," the kind of information that usually goes unrecorded, and an interesting sidebar to Stafford's published account of the poem, reprinted in </i>Crossing Unmarked Snow<i> (1998). Dr Anderson's home page has two addresses, the easy to remember </i><a href="http://www.erlandanderson.com/">www.erlandanderson.com</a> <i>and the address listed in the document below. </i></p><p class="MsoBodyText"><b>Back and Forth:</b><span><b> </b></span><b>Los Prietos, Wendell Berry, Friends of Stafford, Friends of P. B. Shelley</b></p> <p class="MsoBodyText"><o:p> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></o:p>Not until this January, 2010 had I managed to play a part in a William Stafford memorial celebration of his words. Thanks to Paul Willis of Westmont College, an outdoor reading was scheduled on a Saturday afternoon late in that month at Los Prietos, now a California State Park just over the Santa Inez Pass from Santa Barbara. California. Of course, that is the site of one of the camps where Stafford served as a conscientious objector during the Second World War, and where he met his future wife, Dorothy.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>Recent Stafford scholarship has uncovered plenty of new material relating to his development as a writer and poet at Los Prietos, with a clear focus on his writing habits and stance as a witness to events big and small. Before the reading that afternoon, Paul took me for a walk and pointed out several rows of stones, which are the remains of barracks from the days of the CCC and later the CO camps. “Of course, it is also the former site of a Chumash Indian village,” he added. </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>Then Paul had me look across the arroyo, brimming this rainy year with smooth-flowing water, to the mountain opposite and uttered a line from one of Bill’s poems written at the camp and describing the multiple thin layers in those massive white rocks. (Here, if I had been so fortunate, I would have liked to quote that line, but, alas, my memory fails.) [Perhaps Paul was quoting the opening line of The Country of Thin Mountains: “I tell you, friends, the mountains here are thin—” (July 1942) or the phrase from Meditation: “some day, looking along a furrowed cliff” (March 1943), both now in <i style="">Another World Instead,</i> pp. 29 and 38—Ed.]</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>Where memory doesn’t fail me, especially when it comes to quoting Stafford, can be easily reinforced by the many treasured poems I have returned to as a reader and a teacher of his and others’ poetry over the last forty-two years. The multiple contacts—as a student, a reader, a fellow teacher, a correspondent back in the days of snail mail, a fellow poet, and workshop participant—would be too long to trace here, but a few anecdotes from my memories of the various colloquies I had with Bill might be of interest to those with whom I share a common inspiration.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>Vince Mowrey, who also read at Los Prietos that day in January, helped to bring me up to speed afterwards by sending me the CD called <i>Every War Has Two Losers</i>, and then a copy of Kim Stafford’s book-length memoir, <i>Early Morning</i>.<span style=""> </span>It was after re-establishing contact with Kim and sharing shorter versions of the following pieces via email that Kim suggested I try weaving them as a blog on the William Stafford Archive website.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>Oh yes, Kim suggested I should talk “recklessly,” so I will try.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>My very first contact with the work of William Stafford arrived as a package at my apartment in Seattle a month or so after I moved there in 1968 to begin my graduate studies in English. As an undergraduate at UCLA I had drifted from the study of History and Anthropology to Literature and Languages, and, though occasionally trying my hand at a sonnet or two, I saw myself as having a vocation to teach first and then do research and write whatever might come. My impression of “creative writing programs” at the time, I must admit, was not especially positive, and I stuck to the heavy-duty reading programs in multiple European languages emphasizing major writers and historical periods.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>When I finally opened that package in Seattle, out slipped three slender books of poetry—two in hard back (<i>Traveling Through the Dark</i>, and <i>A Rescued Year</i>) one in paper (<i>Allegiances</i>)—sent to me by a cousin in Kansas, who some fifteen years later I would find out had been my birth-mother. (So these books, in hindsight, already fit into a pattern of “tokens” from which I might have inferred a closer relationship to this “country cousin,” but at the time the details of my adoption were a dark, well-kept, family secret.) Back in 1968, it appeared that she simply shared my interest in wide reading and wanted to offer me a link between her favorite poet and my new residence in the Northwest. And, sure enough, it wasn’t long after I read through those books, noting her check marks next to the poems she especially liked, that her “Kansas poet” was scheduled to read on the University of Washington campus. </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>Doing a little preparatory reading before I heard him read aloud, I could tell that William Stafford was a poet who offered words that resonated with a consciousness of current national and local issues both deeply troubling and deeply reassuring. Whereas my education at UCLA had provided a penchant for modernist irony, Ivor Winters, and the “New Criticism” (which was in fact quite old by then), the University of Washington seemed like a deep immersion in an endless variety of poets who gave frequent public readings, culminating every spring with one in memory of Theodore Roethke. His ghost, it was rumored, still walked circuitously through the corridors of Padelford Hall, prodding on the surviving scholars who were his friends: Arnold Stein, Robert Heilmann, Otto Reinhardt, Brents Sterling and my future dissertation advisor, Edward E.Bostetter.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>Appropriately enough, Stafford’s reading was a modest affair, but it left an indelible impression on me. Not certain why, I was nonetheless hooked.<span style=""> </span>His words had been clear and accessible on the page, but something he projected audibly in his reading revived the timbre of his voice afterwards each time I encountered any new poems by him wherever they appeared. In my graduate studies I was gravitating toward the English Romantic poets and quickly<span style=""> </span>made the connection between strains of that tradition in twentieth-century American literature, which he, despite the deceptively plain surface of his work, seemed to have cultivated into a finely expressive art. </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>Furthermore, don’t forget that it was the late Sixties, and every other male student I knew beginning graduate school that year was likely to be drafted into the “war effort” in Vietnam. Having been raised as a son of a lieutenant captain in the Navy during World War Two, I was far from a protester as the war began in the early Sixties. My own “A Draft for Vietnam” from a later chapbook, <i>A Hollow of Waves</i>, and which is accessible on my website, <a href="http://www.erland-anderson.appspot.com,/">www.erland-anderson.appspot.com,</a> details my transformation from Goldwater Republican to ambivalent protester by the end of that decade.<span style=""> </span>Consciously or unconsciously part of my decision to move to Seattle had to do with the proximity of the Canadian border if things came to boil, and I had grown increasingly interested in alternative service myself, attending meetings at the Friends’ Church and examining my own conscience. It was a time of crucial decisions and many had to make them in a highly charged era of “political polarization” and media hyperbole without much calm, reasoned discussion.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>So it was helpful to have a witness to similar inner conflicts and convictions from someone from my parent’s generation who had added current insights in his ongoing production of recent poems. Unlike louder, less temperate voices of protest, Stafford got to the heart of the matter with his steady demeanor and wry sense of humor. Here was a role model, closer to my own temperament, for learning a way to tackle the circumstances and potential vocations in my life without succumbing to anger and despair. Eventually I was to learn that his pacifist religious tradition in the Church of the Brethren had been part of my Kansas heritage on my birth-father’s side at McPherson College, and like his own brother, Bob, my relatives had mostly chosen to part from their religious backgrounds and participate dutifully through military service in World War Two.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>Over the years of our contact, I shared these distant connections of mine with Bill and I made sure to stay abreast of many of his poems and publications on teaching writing and literature. When I, myself, was offered a two-week Poet-in-Residence position in Junction City, Kansas, and the local paper published my poem “Drop Drill” from <i>A Hollow of </i><i style="">Waves,</i> Bill sent me a letter right away, which I received when I returned to the Northwest, telling me that one of his friends or relatives there had sent him my poem and the photo of me reading at the high school. I often consider that poem to be a kind of “Song of Innocence” from a third grader’s perspective on the unimaginable threats of a nuclear holocaust—a horror humanity has managed to avoid up to the present perhaps <i>because</i> we keep reading, writing, praying, and singing in the manner of William Stafford. </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>All the readings and panel discussions that I attended and that he participated in during the period from<span style=""> </span>’68 to ’76 went into my “Continental Drift” from <i>Searchings For Modesto</i>. Also at <a href="http://www.erland-anderson.appspot.com/">www.erland-anderson.appspot.com. </a>What impressed me the most was Bill’s ability to question the more academic poets, who often claimed that political poetry was too often written “from the gutter,” but also to frown, often visibly, at inflated rhetoric by others who departed too radically from the principles of non-violent protest and reconciliation</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>But I drift from my purpose of providing direct dialogues with Bill. At first I was a reader and listener to his poetry and an observer of his witness at gatherings in Seattle, but in 1973 I began teaching, first at Oregon State University and then at Portland State University, and that proximity aided in coming more frequently in direct contact with him. Other poets kept passing our way, too: Gary Snyder, Robert Creeley, Richard Wilbur, Denise Levertov, Allen Ginsberg, W.S. Merlin, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. In Oregon, I began writing journal entries along with my students, and some of my own entries wanted to become poems, which I duly sent out for (not-too-frequent) publication, and collected in my first chapbook, <i>Piedras </i>(1978)<i>.</i> </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>And, of course, by then it was my turn to participate in the dialogue my cousin had started by sending a copy of my poems to William Stafford. And, so like him, he responded to this fledgling work with a letter I cherish, complimenting my “well-placed” poems. After that, it was easier to go up and chat with a man who made a habit of corresponding to all writers, no matter their public status.<span style=""> </span>I have a handful of notes, some instigated by the business of readings and travel accommodations, but all containing bonus descriptions of inner and outer events in his life as he thought they might relate to me and others.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>By the early 1980’s “ecological metaphors” were all the rage, or at least had their moment in the Oregon sun when Wendell Berry, after giving a reading of his own poetry, also gave a lecture out in the Rose Garden during the Portland Poetry Festival that August.<span style=""> </span>I happened to be sitting on a semi-circular cement embankment within earshot of Bill during that presentation in which Berry was attempting to define a poetic aesthetic regarding “nature poetry.”<span style=""> </span>That dissertation was quite ambitious and comprehensive. One among its many examples of illustrious poets who had substituted mental fantasies for more down-to-earth, more-closely-engaged descriptions of nature was Percy Bysshe Shelley.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>Berry’s argument was incisive and full of corroborating examples, indicting Shelley for projecting his erotic dreams onto nature from “Mont Blanc,” to the Vale of Kashmir, to the forests above Florence in a gathering October storm. Shelley had clearly allowed his imagination too much license, to the point of dangerous manipulation of facts and conspicuous over-consumption of nature’s beauties to facilitate his own myth-making.<span style=""> </span>And the consequence of these choices put Shelley’s poetry on the side of Wall Street mass marketing and self-aggrandizement that threatened the planet with Mutually Assured Destruction.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>Strong stuff! And not to be dismissed lightly.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>During the lecture I noticed that Bill’s face showed he was alert but famously non-committal. Then, as Berry worked towards his conclusion, I noticed he was looking over at me from time to time to see how I was reacting to it all.<span style=""> </span>Bill knew me by then for the chapbooks and attendance at readings at Lewis and Clark as well as Portland State. and I think he might have seen my book, <i>Harmonious Madness: A Study of Musical Metaphors in the Poetry of Coleridge, Shelley and Keats</i>.<span style=""> </span>But as we stood up after the lecture, he walked right toward me and in that off-the-cuff (but rhetorical!) way of his, asked me: “Do you really think we need to abandon everything in Shelley?”<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>Of course, I shook my head, “no,” Or at least, “no comment.”<span style=""> </span>Berry’s dichotomies were useful for argumentative topics, but Bill always had a few of “those obstinate questionings” that indicated a subtler, inclusive approach to aesthetic questions.<span style=""> </span>He could even “lower [his] standards” enough to rescue poor Shelley in that moment from a philosophy that might have clipped his ineffectual wings.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>Another time Penny Avila, who was Poetry Editor at <i style="">The</i> <i>Oregonian</i> in those days, organized a workshop at the Portland Zoo. Bill was there early that rainy morning and excited to be face to face with a badger out in the blustery weather.<span style=""> </span>Though the workshop itself turned to topics like the choice of words such as “grasp” at crucial points in a poem, our main concern that day was the ash from a still erupting Mt. St. Helens, falling in the rain and soon to be kicked up into the atmosphere by cars on the roads.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>In Fall of 1983, after beginning work with Lars Nordstrom on translating the poetry of Rolf Aggestam from Swedish, I moved down to Ashland to take a job at Southern Oregon State College, while still participating in the Poets in the Schools Program at two high schools in Salem, Oregon. Starting a poetry workshop in Ashland seemed a logical step, and Patti and Vince Wixon showed up. In a year’s time, along with Lawson and Janet Inada, we had initiated the International Writers’ Series in the Fall of 1984, with our first guest, William Stafford.<span style=""> </span>Although I had been to Spain and to Moscow by then, Bill’s voice was precisely the kind we wished to begin with.<span style=""> </span>After all, there are “Aunt Mabels all over the world/ Or their graves in the rain.”</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>Being away from Portland more often, excepting the annual Writers’ program at Portland State, I had fewer chances to chat with Bill, but thanks to Vince Wixon and Mike Markee, more video material began to surface for use in class when it came to reading Stafford with my students. By then, Judith Kitchen’s <i>Understanding William Stafford </i>had appeared, too.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>One time, maybe the last time Stafford came to Ashland, I went up to chat with him about “Fifteen,” one of the poems he had just read.<span style=""> </span>Along with “Aunt Mabel,” I had been using it to get “reader responses” from my students, but with more success with “Fifteen” than with “Aunt Mabel,” So I recklessly mentioned that to him.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>Bill looked me in the eye and said, “Let me share something with you because I know you will appreciate it: the place I was imagining in that poem was near a certain bridge in town and what we found as kids wasn’t a motorcycle at all but an abandoned bicycle. But, you know, somehow my fifteen-year-old needed a greater temptation.”</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span><i style=""><span style=""> </span></i><span style="">I said,</span> “He either is saved from stealing a motorcycle or misses his big chance to get out of that small town, and that’s what my students like about the poem. It really connects with their lives.” </p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>“Yes,” Bill added, “that’s what I needed.<span style=""> </span>I had to tell the truth in that poem with a little white lie.”</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>That comment hit me like the sound of a motorcycle roaring away.</p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span>Now, “looking back farther in the grass,” I can still picture Bill bringing me full circle back to the best defense of Shelley ever offered me.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: left;" align="left"><span style=""> </span></p> <!--EndFragment-->William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-25758913562962306782010-07-30T16:00:00.000-07:002010-07-30T16:32:38.771-07:00Digitization of Stafford's Daily Writings<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_rdtZlFH2bPB_7GhHw-RYiN5nT6Wr6j_apTsQz3y8AoVrDpx2GkfrQyarum2chESNZtWjxpKGRpCPEpnuYcehYQ3VRBRP9D_nl6EWx2k_zYtOs6bB5Jel0Yv245SeVwjS1s9-yX1RVtU3/s1600/scanning.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_rdtZlFH2bPB_7GhHw-RYiN5nT6Wr6j_apTsQz3y8AoVrDpx2GkfrQyarum2chESNZtWjxpKGRpCPEpnuYcehYQ3VRBRP9D_nl6EWx2k_zYtOs6bB5Jel0Yv245SeVwjS1s9-yX1RVtU3/s320/scanning.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499843888993249090" border="0" /></a><br />During the past two summers numerous student interns have been working at digitizing William Stafford's daily writings. The image at the right shows Nick Erickson scanning a page of Stafford's writing from the last week of his life.<br /><br />Last summer we digitized and posted the daily writings and related materials for all of the poems in the books <span style="font-style: italic;">West of Your City</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Traveling through the Dark</span> at <a href="http://williamstaffordarchives.org/">williamstaffordarchives.org</a> This summer we are finishing digitizing every page of his daily writings. In fact, we anticipate the final page to be digitized sometime next week. Although there are no immediate plans to post all of this content online, having the material digitized is an important form of preservation. It provides a backup copy in the unlikely case that an original were to be damaged. Having a digital copy also allows for scholars to study Stafford's writings without excessive handling of the originals. For scholars that don't live in the Pacific Northwest, the creation digital copies of Stafford's manuscripts also opens up the possibility of remote access and research. All of these developments are exciting to the staff here at Lewis & Clark, and it is our hope that everyone interested in Stafford's writing will benefit from this project.William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-86095243800053525982010-07-01T11:07:00.000-07:002010-07-01T11:19:43.921-07:00Norman Solomon Interviews Haydn ReissLinda Short informs us about a screening with Alice Walker of Haydn Reiss's film based on William Stafford's "Every War Has Two Losers." The link below leads to Norman Solomon's interview with Reiss aired on local community television.<br /><br /><a href="http://cmcm.tv/node/290">http://cmcm.tv/node/290</a>William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-48453090086232141662010-06-22T14:59:00.000-07:002010-06-22T15:29:14.635-07:00Summer Work on William Stafford's CorrespondenceThis summer staff and volunteers at the William Stafford Archives are in the process of completing a finding aid for the 35,000+ items in Stafford's collected correspondence. This is an exciting project which will provide researchers with the ability to search the finding aid by personal name, corporate name, and date. Every day reveals interesting letters. Today we discovered the following notice printed by Walter Hamady of the Perishable Press. Click on the image to enlarge. The fine print is definitely worth reading.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLriXemMRW88Mu-VSzT5x4YQ_0BEmu0_c6rub-YVxSJhxGJY6aKJkjTNfpxUBqdx38cSR63u7r2Q2k5tvQ9mMXDckH9vEC9RBQSnfCZgIGJx0YwLVFvbMNrZZd-HNARLYg8ILUkNlzAG1v/s1600/FattFinger.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 254px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLriXemMRW88Mu-VSzT5x4YQ_0BEmu0_c6rub-YVxSJhxGJY6aKJkjTNfpxUBqdx38cSR63u7r2Q2k5tvQ9mMXDckH9vEC9RBQSnfCZgIGJx0YwLVFvbMNrZZd-HNARLYg8ILUkNlzAG1v/s400/FattFinger.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485724576114954418" /></a>William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-47755201371873716332010-04-16T14:25:00.000-07:002010-04-16T14:32:36.418-07:00National Poetry Month Reading ListNancy Pearl, a celebrity librarian and commentator on NPR, recently put together a list of eight recommended poetry books for National Poetry Month. Pearl included Stafford's <span style="font-style:italic;">The Way It Is</span> on her list. Listen to Pearl's interview and read her comments at the following link:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125997807">http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125997807</a>William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-54654904171335245182010-03-09T10:31:00.000-08:002010-03-09T10:56:51.278-08:00Stafford's Voice on KUOW RadioAs she promised last month, when she introduced her own reading of Stafford's late poem "You Reading This, Be Ready" (see post for February 17),Elizabeth Austen of Seattle's KUOW recently played a recording of William Stafford himself reading his "A Ritual to Read to Each Other." The link is below (click "Download"). Many thanks again to Elizabeth for her continued hospitality to the work of William Stafford.<br /><br /><a href="http://kuow.org/program.php?id=19638">http://kuow.org/program.php?id=19638</a>William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-70679137475082103102010-02-25T09:17:00.000-08:002010-02-25T10:28:08.112-08:00Japanese Translation for Language ProficiencyEarlier this year, Barbara Schramm engaged in an interesting educational experiment, using translations of William Stafford poems into Japanese as a means of enhancing the students' comprehension and vocabulary skills in English. She writes:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">This is my tenth year facilitating an intensive three-day January Seminar with the Academy of International Education at St. Martin’s University. Established in California in 1981, the Academy of International Education (AIE) has been running its study-abroad program in Washington over the past twenty years, partnering with Saint Martin's University and other local universities and colleges. AIE founder, Dr. Toshio Ogoshi, bases his educational philosophy on building individual character while exposing students to American life and language. AIE offers various programs with the goal of building internationally minded Japanese.<br /><br />Students are enrolled in ESL and the liberal arts curriculum simultaneously and have varying degrees of English language proficiency.<br /><br />This January, Paul Merchant, Director of the William Stafford Archives, asked me to choose four of my favorite poems, poems I thought meaningful for the students, for translating from English into Japanese. I sent “For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid”, “A Ritual To Read To Each Other”, “A Valley Like This”, and “Ask Me”, to the students in late October to “live with” the poems so to speak, knowing they wouldn’t have much time to study the poems given their academic schedules. On the first day of the seminar it became clear that most of the thirty-one students were considering the poetry for the first time. <br /><br />Since I don’t speak Japanese, there is a senior student who translates my speaking into Japanese. The students ask me questions in English. This works well, better than one might expect. The student translators are fluent in English and, of course in Japanese. Through the years I’ve encouraged students to speak to each other across the room to help clarify each other’s thoughts and to help with translating my remarks. This works well. The class is theirs and is open and lively.<br /><br />For this project we divided the class into six groups, five/six students in each group, making certain that third and fourth year students were in each of the groups. This year’s students were Kenta Toyomura, Hirotsugu Kojima, Kohei Shimada, Makoto Yuasa, Maki Korai, Yusuke Takami, Tetsuro Ohira, So Sato, Hirotsugu Kawai, Ryoko Wada, Kimiko Hakomori, Hiroko Momose, Takahiro Kato, Shingo Kojima, Kodai Kojima, Atsuhito Sekiya, Takumi Iizuka, Kokoro Iwano, Yoshiko Watanabe, Kaoru Fujita, Koshiro Ueda, Maki Endo, Ayumi Mikuriya, Hirofumi Kuroda, Yuki Otsuki, Tetsuya Yonetsu, Takashi Fujii, Yosuke Oi, Yuki Kato, Yasuyuki Shimada, Takuya Hashimoto, Mayumi Iwata, Ryota Mizutani, Eriko Nekomoto.<br /><br />We began with “For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid,” one of the most difficult of the four poems. AIE students read the poem aloud first in Japanese and then in English, twice, using the poem as a meditation. (I’ve previously worked with the students practicing meditation so they understand the process and purpose). The other three poems were “A Ritual to Read to Each Other,” “A Valley Like This,” and “Ask Me.”<br /><br />The readings of each poem were followed by class discussion then writing in student journals, responding to questions such as: Write about the title, what does it seem to prefigure? How does it work to assist the ideas of this poem? Choose one line from the poem and respond to it: What are your associations with it? What does it remind you of? What question does it ask or answer? Why did you choose this line? Which one word is at the heart or core of this poem? If you had to choose one word to represent the entire poem, which would it be? Explain your choices. <br /><br />It was a great joy to watch the lively activity in each group—laughing, serious conversation, questions for me, much work with hand-held computer dictionaries. There was a lot of language learning going on. At the William Stafford birthday celebration, one of the new students said the translating helped him realize how limited his own Japanese vocabulary is. We worked five and one-half hours for three full days and the students worked with their Winter 2010 Interim Director, Chie Yuhara, during the evenings, coming up with a final translation of the poems selected for the Friends of William Stafford website.<br /><br />On the third day we concluded with an art project, an All Hands Poem. We divided into four groups---the students chose the poem they most wanted to work with. Students selected a line or two from their journal writing, wrote those lines on strips of watercolor paper that they’d washed, then glued the strips on tag board, also washed and shaped by their creative imagination. Their new poem was given a title with reference to the original WS poem and then signed at the bottom by each of the students. These were beautiful creations. I wish you could see them.<br /><br />On Saturday, January 16, we held a William Stafford birthday celebration in Heron Hall on the St. Martin’s campus where we again read all the poems, eight students reading in English and Japanese. We discussed the translation process and students described the “All Hands Poems” that hung on the wall. One of the AIE students said he realized that his Japanese vocabulary was limited and wants to work to correct that. The students’ ESL instructor was one of the guests. He said he was amazed at the language learning that took place and asked to be invited next year to see their seminar work.<br /><br />One of the St. Martin's monks attending our William Stafford birthday celebration told me that Stafford had spent time on campus through the years, attending the Washington State Poetry Association, or some such organization. How appropriate that we should have this opportunity to translate his poems into Japanese on the campus where, according to Father Benedict, he walked in the woods.<br /><br />My heartfelt thanks to Paul Merchant for suggesting this excellent language-learning project, introducing William Stafford’s philosophy for student discussion. Thanks also to writer, poet and FWS Board member, Ann Staley, for sharing her process for the All Hands Poem project. Finally, I'd like to thank Takuya Otani, AIE Director, for his good-natured support throughout this project.<br /><br />Barbara Schramm<br /></span><br /><br />The three most successful group translations (of “A Ritual to Read to Each Other,” “A Valley Like This,” and “Ask Me”) are printed here.<br /><br />William Stafford has been translated into Japanese in the past by two other translators. Yorifumi Yaguchi, a friend of William Stafford’s who collaborated with him on translations of Japanese poems into English, and also engaged with him in a handful of <span style="font-style:italic;">renga</span>-type alternating poems, has published a number of translations of Stafford poems into Japanese. And Portland poet Ritz Kyoko Mori gathered a collection of her translations of William Stafford in the second William Stafford Chapbook series at Lewis & Clark College.<br /><br /><br />Collaborative translations into Japanese by AIE students, AIE Winter Seminar 2010<br /><br /><br />A Ritual To Read To Each Other 互いに読み合う儀式<br /><br />もし、あなたが、私がどんな人間であるかを知らず、<br />そして、私が、あなたがどんな人間であるかを知らなければ、<br />誰かの手によって作られた模範が世に広まり、<br />そして、誤った偶像を追い、私たちの星を見失うかもしれない。<br /><br />なぜなら、心の中には、小さな裏切りがたくさんある。<br />崩れた堤(つつみ)を通り抜けて遊びに行こうと飛び出してしまったような、<br />子どもの頃の恐ろしい過ちを、叫びながら、<br />肩をすくめて見てみる振りをして、<br />脆いつながりを壊してしまうようなことだ。<br /><br />象が前の象の尻尾を鼻でつかみながら、連なり行進しているとき、<br />その中の一頭が群れを外れて迷ってしまうと、<br />他の象も行き着くべき場所を見失ってしまう。<br />私は、それを残酷と呼ぶ。そして、何が起こるかを知りながら、<br />その事実を認識しようとしないというすべての残酷さの源となる。<br /><br />だから、私は、影となっている声に問いかける。<br />話をする人々すべてのなかにある、遠く離れているが大切な場所なのだが、<br />それは陰に隠れている。<br />私たちは、互いにからかうことはできるが、<br />互いの人生の行進が闇へと迷いこまないように、<br />深く考えるべきである。<br /><br />なぜなら、目覚めている人は、目覚め続けていることが大切であり、<br />そうしなければ、行進の列を崩すことで、人を眠りに戻してしまうからだ。<br />私たちが出す合図は、「はい」か「いいえ」か、「たぶん」であり、<br />それらは、明確でなければならない。<br />私たちを取り囲む暗闇は、深い。<br /><br /><br /><br />A Valley Like This このような谷<br /><br />ときどき、あなたは、このような空虚な谷を見る。<br />そして突然、雪がその空間を埋める。<br />こうしてすべての世界は生まれた。<br />そこには何もなかった。そして、それから・・・<br /><br />しかし、あなたが外を見ると、ある時、<br />山さえも消えているかもしれない。<br />世界は再び、無に返る。<br />世界を元に戻すのに、人は何ができるのだろうか。<br /><br />私たちは、世界を見て、そしてそれから互いのことも見なければならない。<br />一緒に、まるで、注意して見ておかないと消えてしまう泡を持つように、<br />寄り添い、その世界を守っていくのだ。<br /><br />生き続けながら、このことをよく考えてください。<br />世界に息を吹きかけてください。<br />世界に手を差し伸べてください。<br />朝と夜が繰り返される中で、どのように日が昇って沈み、<br />あなたの人生という祝宴に、世界がどのようにあなたを招き入れるのかを、<br />よく見てください。<br /><br /><br />Ask Me たずねなさい<br /><br />いつか、川が凍りつくとき、私にたずねなさい。<br />私が犯した過ちを。<br />私がしてきたことが、私の人生となってきたのかどうかも、<br />自身にたずねなさい。<br />私ではない他人が、私の思考の中にゆっくりと入ってくる。<br />そして、私を助けようとする者もいたし、傷つけようとする者もいた。<br />彼らのもっとも強い愛と憎しみは、どんな違いを生んだのか、<br />たずねなさい。<br /><br />あなたが言うことを、私は聞こう。<br />あなたと私は向きを変え、<br />その音のない川を見つめながら、待つこともできる。<br />私たちは、そこに流れがあることを知っている。隠れているが、<br />何マイルも彼方から流れこみ、流れすぎて行く。<br />そして、ちょうど私たちの目の前では、その静かな流れを止めている。<br />その川が言うこと、それは私が言うことなのだ。William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-15699986533816389372010-02-23T09:54:00.000-08:002010-02-23T10:24:57.924-08:00Emily Miller Reports on Educational Use of the ArchivesEmily Miller at Lewis & Clark College has just posted a story (at the URL below) summarizing the latest developments at the William Stafford Archives, including links to other commentaries. The article provides information about the ongoing work of digitization and cataloguing, with the invaluable help of students in the process, and the use of archival materials in educational outreach into Oregon schools and beyond. Many thanks to Emily for her careful summary. Feel free to respond to her story, either here or at the original site, with comments or suggestions.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.lclark.edu/news/story/?id=4540">http://www.lclark.edu/news/story/?id=4540</a>William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-84856616945750436562010-02-17T08:58:00.000-08:002010-02-23T10:26:58.447-08:00"You Reading This, Be Ready" on KUOW Public Radio, Seattle<div>William Stafford's poem "You Reading This, Be Ready" was written on August 26th, 1993, in the wonderfully productive last week of his life. It was sensitively read recently by Elizabeth Austen, with a very pleasing commentary, on KUOW Seattle. Her reading and commentary can be heard at the link below. Many thanks to Elizabeth Austen, who also plans to present one of William Stafford's own readings of "A Ritual to Read to Each Other" in a future program.</div><div><br /></div><a href="http://kuow.org/program.php?id=19409">http://kuow.org/program.php?id=19409</a>William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-91250125008249263112009-11-20T12:28:00.000-08:002010-02-26T09:10:29.065-08:00A Story That Could Be TrueKim Stafford recently alerted us to the fact that William Stafford's poem "A Story That Could Be True" (from the book <span style="font-style: italic;">Stories That Could Be True, </span>1977) played a prominent role in the pilot episode of the television show "The Riches" (2007).William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-85226719366848690982009-10-12T12:56:00.000-07:002009-10-12T13:20:01.679-07:00William Stafford and His First PublishersThe William Stafford Archives is pleased to announce the publication of: <span style="font-style: italic;">William Stafford and His First Publishers: The Making of</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">West of Your City</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">and</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Traveling through the Dark</span> by Vincent Wixon and Paul Merchant. This essay is the first of an occasional William Stafford Studies series published by the Lewis & Clark College Special Collections. The essay can downloaded in PDF form at: <a href="http://digitalcollections.lclark.edu/cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/pubs&CISOPTR=55&filename=56.pdf">http://digitalcollections.lclark.edu/cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/pubs&CISOPTR=55&filename=56.pdf</a><br />Hard copies can be requested by emailing Paul Merchant (merchant@lclark.edu).William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-76719489423604172212009-10-09T10:08:00.000-07:002009-10-09T10:22:11.968-07:00Every War Has Two Losers documentaryBe sure to visit the new website and watch the powerful trailer for the documentary film about William Stafford, <span style="font-style: italic;">Every War Has Two Losers </span>directed by Haydn Reiss at <a href="http://www.everywar.com/">http://www.everywar.com/</a>William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-76216137039084155922009-08-26T15:48:00.000-07:002009-08-26T16:08:43.186-07:00Students and Other Researchers Welcome at the ArchivesStudents may like to be reminded that Watzek Library's Special Collections and the William Stafford Room in 336 on the library's third floor house a unique resource, the complete papers of William Stafford, state and national poet laureate, who taught at the college for thirty years from 1947. You are encouraged to come to the Heritage Room and the next door office (230) to view aspects of the collection, which includes all twenty thousand pages of the poet's daily journal, the documentary copies and publisher correspondence for his sixty or so published volumes, around a thousand prints from his twelve thousand photographs, some ninety broadsides of his poems, and almost one hundred CDs of his poem readings. Special Collections staff (Doug Erickson, Jeremy Skinner and Paul Merchant) will welcome individual vistors or small groups, and are always willing to help students' research for Historical Materials, and other course projects.William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-27905409488263453372009-08-26T15:14:00.000-07:002009-08-26T15:46:43.128-07:00Carolyn Buan Remembers William StaffordLewis & Clark College alum Carolyn Buan, author and co-author of a number of books, including <span style="font-style: italic;">The First Oregonian</span>s, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Age of Abundance in an Age of Austerity</span>, and <span style="font-style: italic;">Portland Then and Now</span>, has sent us her reminiscences of William Stafford, illustrating (as others have done) the poet's willingness to provide beginning authors with material for their projects<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">When I was a junior at Lewis & Clark College in 1959-60, I had a lit class from William Stafford. Oddly enough, I don’t remember the name of that class. What I do remember is my frustration when this wonderful man and nationally famous poet began many sessions by apologizing for not being up to the task of teaching it. I used to think, How could you possibly believe you have to apologize for anything, much less your teaching abilities! I, like my classmates, was awestruck by him. How could he not be awestruck by himself?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Fast forward two years. By then I was at the University of Washington working towards my masters degree in English and taking a class in contemporary poetry from none other than Theodore Roethke. Our major assignment for his class: write a paper about a contemporary poet. Gathering up my courage, I wrote to Professor Stafford and asked if I had his permission to do a paper on him. The reply was vintage Stafford. “I can’t imagine why you would want to write about me” (or words to that effect). “However, I have some new, unpublished poems. Would you like to see them and use them for your paper?” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Unfortunately, in all my moves from one spot to another, I lost that paper. But I will never forget the honor of having William Stafford take such an interest in a former student and provide such wonderful material for my paper. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Years later, when I was associate director of the Oregon Council for the Humanities, I had other opportunities to meet with Professor Stafford. On one of those occasions, he shyly asked if I would like to see an interesting picture. It was a snapshot of a dewy young Bill Clinton, taken when he was a university student. I don’t recall if Bill took the picture and under what circumstances (I’m sure he explained it to me at the time). What I do recall is that he didn’t editorialize. Clinton was president at the time, and the photograph, which showed his famous grin and self-confidence, said it all.</span><br /><br />Carolyn BuanWilliam Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-20627453715116449402009-07-14T10:12:00.000-07:002009-07-14T10:16:57.603-07:00Driving William Stafford<font class="Apple-style-span" face="'times new roman'">Richard Robbins has written an evocative account of being William Stafford's driver during the poet's visit to Mankato College, Minnesota in 1988. Read his blogs at the following URLs:</font><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" style="color: rgb(0, 80, 174); line-height: 42px; ">http://www.creativenonfiction.org/brevity/brev30/robbins_stafford.html</font><br /></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" style="color: rgb(0, 80, 174); line-height: 42px;"> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:13.0pt;line-height:18.0pt;mso-pagination: none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><u style="text-underline: #0050AE"><font face="Helvetica" color="#0050AE" style="font-family:Helvetica;mso-bidi- ">http://brevity.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/blogging-william-stafford/</font></u><font face="Georgia" size="12.0pt" style="font-size:13.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia; mso-bidi-"><o:p></o:p></font></p> <!--EndFragment--> </font></div>William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-24684385027276345412009-05-18T10:13:00.000-07:002009-07-07T16:20:04.278-07:00Barry M Clock Remembers William Stafford<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Barry Clock recently sent us this delightfully self-deprecating and affectionate account of his experiences with William Stafford as a teacher:</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">SOMETIMES GREAT THINGS HAPPEN TO US </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">IN SPITE OF OUR BEST EFFORTS OTHERWISE.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> I was a junior at L&C and had put off taking my English requirements for another year. I had my fill of Shakespeare and all those fellows back in high school and was dreading a follow-up course in college. In fact, I could see no good reason why it was even a requirement (and don't forget, I knew practically everything about everything ...I can't emphasize that enough). So I asked one of my friends at LC the all-important question about this prof named Stafford, "Is he easy?" He replied, "Well, ya, I didn't read more than 20 pages in that class and he passed me!" I'm thinking, just what the doctor ordered for spring time on Palatine Hill ..."English Lit for Dummies". I had just completed a course nicknamed "Rocks for Jocks" (Geology) the previous term, which ended up being difficult and one of the best classes I had ever taken in college. I was determined that wouldn't happen again.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> So after all my hard work in "Rocks" and football and wrestling, I was due for a break with this Stafford guy, whom I had never even heard of before. So I walked into class in the basement of one of the Forest dorms on the first day. Perhaps 12 students and a teacher were sitting in a circle in a student desk (ya, I was late). Oh, oh, this doesn't look good,” I thought as I quickly looked around, "I'm going to have to say something in this class this term, with only a dozen other students and maybe even say what I think and why. And what's with that prof sitting there, like he actually cares? Plus he's looking like he is expecting to learn something from US as well?" This could be trouble. Oh well, at least he's easy.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> William Stafford's soft-spoken words, thoughtful statements, unassuming attitude and easy-going ways swallowed me up from the first moment that class started. This "easy" guy had me hooked from the moment I cracked Shakespeare open that day and the discussion began, a timeless discussion that never ends, about good and evil and human nature. I loved it all, I had always read everything I could lay my hands on before this, but not LIKE THIS. I thought, "Hey, this guy's not too bad, he might make something of himself yet." A few weeks later, while eating dinner at Saga, I said just that (can you imagine anyone as stupid as I was?) and one of my friends looked at me and said, "Don't you know, ol' Stafford has a stack of awards that would make all of our sports awards look like nothin'?"<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"> You know, in some ways I wish I had never heard that, because my respect for him jumped a mile higher. And it shouldn't have, because he was what he was, awards or not. But that too is human nature. I have two fond memories of Stafford (excuse my use of his name, to me that is a sign of familiarity and highest regard). One was the day when he had me read what I had written in front of the class followed by a discussion of it. He had ME read something to HIM ...is that a joke or what? So, of course I couldn't wait to take a Western Lit class from him the next year. I remember willingly reading all of Dante's "Inferno", when I should have been playing cards and talking with my teammates, on the team bus crossing Eastern Oregon and Idaho in a snow storm ...thinking, "How did ol' Stafford know I'd be out here in this frozen waste land reading about a hell that is frozen?"</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"> In closing, I went on to teach high school at Newport for nearly 30 years. Many of my methods were borrowed from William Stafford. I recall a poster was hung in the NHS library, one year, with his picture on it, about him being the National Poet Laureate or something. I told everyone who would listen, "That was my professor! Can you believe it?" They didn't understand. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> Every year when fall rolls around again, invariably I think of his poem, "That Autumn Instant", the finest thing ever written about a season of a year, a season in life. And my last thought, after rereading it is, "What if I hadn't taken the 'easy' professor and I had taken a 'hard' professor instead?"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> So I learned, sometimes in life, the "easy" way out is the best as well as the hardest.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Barry M Clock<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">L&C, class of '70<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">THAT AUTUMN INSTANT</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">You stand on a hill in July<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">and wave: you feel summer stream over<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">the land, part of a river too wide<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">to cross, ever—still and mild.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">You feel that river turn on its back<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">and stare at the sky.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">You turn to dive again for your life<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">where it leads you, by breath and<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">anything next. The daylight endures;<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">it won’t pass; it follows the sun<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">around. But wherever you turn,<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">there on the grass and weeds<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">winter has brushed its hand.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">William Stafford, from <i style="">Smoke’s Way</i>, Graywolf Press, 1983.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >In response to a prompt from Kim Stafford, Barry sent these further thoughts</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">MY PROF</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">RECOLLECTIONS FROM 1968 & 1969<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> This little essay began with an email when I said, "Kim, I could go on and on about your father's teaching methods, should you care to hear someday, (filtered through 30+ years)." You took me up on my offer to share some of my observations on your father and my professor at L&C, William Stafford.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"> In my mind, teaching was Stafford's greatest legacy, not poetry (but he wasn't too shabby at that either, ha). As far as I know he never got an award for teaching. In spite of what you hear sometimes in the media, teaching success is so difficult to measure. I taught high school for 30 years and I noticed that most awards connected with it are rather meaningless and often based on PR and garbage. It seems to me that the only teaching award that matters is the look in your student's eyes ...and in your eyes while you are teaching. It's kind of silly that it comes down to that, something so nebulous, in our "scientific, statistical" world. But it's the truest thing. If I were a principal, that's what I'd really be looking for when I was filling in the paperwork for a teacher's evaluation.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"> That was the thing, it was all in your father's eyes. That look at the start of class, a hint of a smile, a mischievous glance around the room, a thoughtful stare at the ceiling ...all gave me the feeling, "Do you want to do some thinking today? You guys want to kick around some words and ideas? Want to read some stuff and talk about it?" In short, Stafford's look was, "Hey, do you guys want to come out and play?"</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"> That was one thing I took with me when I set off into the world of teaching. Education and teaching and learning are serious stuff, but NEVER take yourself too seriously. And there are two ways to go about it, the teacher's way or the student's way. The "student's way" is the best. A teacher is a student as well. I knew all that from watching Stafford in class, but of course I had to relearn it the hard way in front of high school students myself.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"> I don't want to sound sappy, but the feeling that Stafford gave us—that he really and truly cared about all things connected with us—amazed me. In fact it still does. I think I was able to communicate that to my students throughout the years also. My way was through a liberal dose of humor with all my students. His was a deeper thing, impossible to explain and convey.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"> Kim, if I have come across as disrespectful towards your father, by calling him by his last name in class and in this essay ...that is the opposite of my feelings for him and my intentions. I considered it a compliment of the highest order when all my students in class, and through out the years since, just called me "Clock". That was all I wanted. No Mr. or whatever. That's what your dad really taught me. Humility, caring, an understanding that was all-encompassing, a love of true learning and to be welcoming to all. Those are very difficult lessons to learn in life. And Stafford taught them all to me by example. Oh, and a little poetry and literature as well!</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">Barry M Clock</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:85%;">L&C Class of '70<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-86729631967514338752009-04-29T13:53:00.000-07:002009-05-18T10:21:01.032-07:00William Stafford Teaching<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">In response to the current article in the Lewis & Clark Chronicle ("William Stafford Returns to Lewis & Clark"), William Sack writes a reminiscence of Stafford as a teacher, ending in a pleasantly rueful poet's comment: </span></span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote type="cite" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote type="cite" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">In 1954 I was a sophomore pre-med student. I took William Stafford's course, Intro. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">To English Literature because it was required to have some English. Little </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">did I know how lucky I was! That course has stayed with me over the past fifty- five </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">years. When Dr. Stafford read a poem, one was transported into another world. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I've never heard anyone read a poem the way he could. (At the time I didn't </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">know he was a famous poet himself.) Anyway one day, after reading a sonnet </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">of Shakespeare's, he sighed and said, "After Shakespeare everything else </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">seems a bit shabby." </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote type="cite" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Bill Sack, '56</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"></blockquote></span>William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-44562380699924253362009-04-15T12:06:00.000-07:002009-04-15T12:35:42.568-07:00Another World Instead: William Stafford Peace Symposium (May 14-16)The William Stafford Archives will be teaming with the Lamb Foundation to sponsor two literary events in the summer: a three-day peace symposium at the First Unitarian Church in downtown Portland, and a July project working with local teachers to create curriculum based on the work of William Stafford. The symposium ("Another World Instead") will present an evening of films, including the premiere of Haydn Reiss's new film "Every War Has Two Losers," an all-day Friday workshop led by Kim Stafford and Fred Marchant (editor of the edition of William Stafford's early poems, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Another World Instead</span>), followed by an evening poetry reading, and a Saturday series of papers by scholars of pacifist writing including Jeff Gundy, Philip Metres, Fred Marchant, Mary Szybist, and members of the Archives team.<div><br /></div><div>Friday evening and all Saturday events are free and open to the public; the film showing (for which there will be a small admission fee) is at the Northwest Film Center. For further information about the symposium in general, please visit the following website:</div><div><br /></div><div>http://www.staffordarchives.org/symposium.html </div><div><br /></div><div>For information on the all-day Friday class (for which credit is available) see:</div><div><br /></div><div>http://www.lclark.edu/dept/nwi/anotherworld.html </div><div><br /></div><div>or contact Ashley Powers / aehlers@lclark.edu / 503-768-6043.<br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6002991008002587943.post-8980024951667916772009-04-13T12:09:00.000-07:002009-04-13T12:24:15.596-07:00Stanford English Professor reads Stafford Poem on NPR.<div><img id="cover" src="http://content-7.powells.com/cgi-bin/imageDB.cgi?isbn=9780300137507" alt="Can Poetry Save the Earth?: A Field Guide to Nature Poems Cover" title="Can Poetry Save the Earth?: A Field Guide to Nature Poems" /><br /></div>John Felstiner was on NPR this morning to promote his new book, 'Can Poetry Save the Earth?'. He answers this question throught the voices of many poets, from William Carlos Williams to an eight year old boy named El'Jay Johnson. On the program he reads Stafford's, 'The Well Rising'. It was read in response to the reporter asking him to pick just one poem that might save the Earth. Here is a link to the whole segment on <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102795472">NPR</a>. Thanks to Kim Stafford and John Felstiner for alerting us to this segment. Felstiner's Book can be found at: www.powells.com<div>- Doug Erickson <br /><br /><img src="http://media.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2009/apr/felstiner200.jpg" width="200" class="photo border " alt="John Felstiner" /><br /></div>William Stafford Archiveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10534559698156432770noreply@blogger.com1