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Title: The Way It Is by William Stafford ISBN: 1-55597-284-5 Publisher: Graywolf Press Pub. Date: 15 April, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Stafford's Voice Makes You Listen
Comment: When I read the poems of William Stafford, it feels less like reading and more like "listening." There's something about his voice that calls me to attention, that makes me notice not only the words on the page but all the sounds that attend my mornings: the return of the finches to the Hawthorne tree, for example, or the rustle of wind in the new cherry blossoms. As I re-read some of my favorite poems from The Way it Is, I find myself in a strange situation; I feel as though I have traded places with the poet, "partly propped up" on the sofa in his den at 4 a.m., where he wrote every day until he died in 1993. Perhaps it is because he often tells us so much about the writing process itself; Stafford's poems are imbued with that particular room; they arise from that private space he allows us to enter for a few moments at a time. He often brings in the same details over and over, the mundane yet transcendent things he notices in the early hours: sunlight moving across a wood floor, trees "still trying to arch as far as they could," the houses that "waited, white, blue, gray..." The things themselves, as in the poetry of William Carlos Williams, become the containers of ideas, thought, emotion. The diction is simple, the rhythm a comfort; before we know it, we've been lured into a place of transcendence without even trying.
The sun becomes a constant companion to the writing act, a kind of muse that illuminates the hand at work. For instance, the last poem he wrote, just hours before he died, begins with the line: "Well, it was yesterday./Sunlight used to follow my hand." Towards the end, he reiterates: "I listened and put my hand/out in the sun again. It was all easy." Perhaps the knowledge that these are the last lines Stafford will write adds to their poignancy (that hand will soon be stilled, in darkness), but I feel privileged, every time I open this book, to be in the presence of a voice that speaks so simply and yet with such passion. Because of the sheer number of poems and writings Stafford left behind, there are bound to be some clunkers, some lines that seem overly simplistic and sentimental, but the force of Stafford's voice overcomes these occasional lapses. The Way it Is is a "must have" for the writer's library; crack open the book at the start of your own writing session and you'll remember why you ever wanted to be a writer in the first place.
Rating: 4
Summary: Intelligent and meditative.
Comment: This latest and last living collection of William Stafford's work covers the past 20 odd years of his poetry as well as giving the reader some new, never before published work including the poem he wrote on the day that he died. This collection gives us an overview of Stafford's poetry that reveals him to be a man who is both interested and amused by the world around him. The book is divided into four sections, each of which is full of intelligent and meditative work reminiscent of the best of E.B. White's essays. While White was an essayist (not just a children's writer), and Stafford a poet, both men revel in unraveling the intricacies of the world using nothing more than the simple information provided to them in their daily lives. In "Stories From Kansas", Stafford simplifies the voracious egos of humankind into silly yet proud tufts of grass, "Little bunches of/grass pretend they are bushes/that will never bow./ They bow..." "The Way I! ! t Is" is reccomended reading for those who like a little zen with their humility or a little salt with their watermelon.
(excerpted from "Sic Vice & Verse" review by Carlye Archibeque.)
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Title: The Darkness Around Us is Deep : Selected Poems of William Stafford by William Stafford ISBN: 0060969164 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 29 December, 1993 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Crossing Unmarked Snow : Further Views on the Writer's Vocation by William Stafford, Paul Merchant, Vincent Wixon ISBN: 0472066641 Publisher: UMP Pub. Date: 01 March, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Even in Quiet Places: Poems by William Stafford ISBN: 1881090167 Publisher: Confluence Pr Pub. Date: May, 1997 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Learning to Live in the World: Earth Poems by William Stafford by Jerry Watson, Laura Apol Obbink, William Stafford ISBN: 0152002081 Publisher: Harcourt Children's Books Pub. Date: 30 November, 1994 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Down in My Heart by William Stafford, Kim Stafford ISBN: 0870714309 Publisher: Oregon State Univ Pr Pub. Date: October, 1998 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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