Kim Stafford, Literary Executor
William Stafford, 1993 (photo by Kim Stafford)
The William Stafford Archive is directed by Paul Merchant. Diane McDevitt is the Archive Assistant. Vincent Wixon is the Archive Scholar in Residence. Kim Stafford is the Literary Executor of the Estate of William Stafford, of which the Archive forms the core.
As literary executor for the William Stafford Archive, Kim Stafford makes available the following information and text samples from the Archive, for readers of William Stafford. On this page, by scrolling down, you will find the following materials:
1.William Stafford short biography
2. William Stafford bibliography of book publications
3. A profile of the William Stafford Room, at the Watzek Library, Lewis & Clark College
4. Samples of texts by William Stafford
5. Information about joining the "Friends of William Stafford," or securing permission for reprinting texts by William Stafford
1. William Stafford short biography...
1914-1993
Born in Hutchinson, Kansas, as a boy William Stafford developed the reputation of being a skillful hunter, bow-maker, and a "kind of an Indian," as one old-timer told it. In his early years he worked a variety of jobs &emdash; stooping with the short hoe in sugar beet fields, swinging a hammer in construction, straining at wrenches with a cheater bar at the oil refinery &emdash; and received his bachelor's degree from the University of Kansas in 1937. A conscientious objector and pacifist, he spent the years 1942-46 in Civilian Public Service camps and social agencies in Arkansas, California, and Illinois, fighting forest fires, building and maintaining trails and roads, working with ax and shovel to temper the effects of soil erosion, and in office jobs for peace. After the war he taught high school, worked as secretary to the director of Church World Service, and completed his master's degree at the University of Kansas, submitting for the thesis his account of war experience as a conscientious objector, which was later published as the book Down in My Heart. In 1948 he joined the English faculty of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, where (with time out for earning a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1954) he taught until his retirement.
After retirement from teaching, he began rising earlier to write &emdash; at 3 instead of 4 a.m. By the time first light came, his work was well begun.
Married to Dorothy Hope Frantz in 1944, and the father of four children, Stafford authored 67 volumes. His first book of poetry,West of Your City, was published when he was 46. In addition to the 1963 National Book Award for Traveling Through the Dark, Stafford's many honors included Poetry Consultant for the Library of Congress (1970-71) and the Shelley Award from the Poetry Society of America. He was appointed Oregon Poet Laureate in 1975 by Governor Tom McCall, and each year opened the session of the Oregon Legislature by reading a poem. An enormously loved and admired writer, a generous mentor to aspiring poets everywhere, Stafford traveled thousands of miles in his later years, giving readings in colleges and universities, community centers and libraries throughout the United States and in Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran, Germany, Austria, and Poland.
When asked by a publishing company to write his autobiography, he spent most of his account on the first fifteen years, that formative period where he learned in the big open of Kansas that "everywhere we looked the land would hold us up." When asked for his favorite poem he had ever written, in the spirit of his early mornings he replied, "I would trade everything I have ever written for the next thing."
He died at his home in Lake Oswego, Oregon, in August of 1993.
2. William Stafford bibliography of book publications
This bibliography includes materials currently in print and available for purchase (in bold print) and/or included in the Watzek Library collection at Lewis & Clark College (with asterisks). The main listing is arranged by date of publication or production. But first, three highlights from this list -- the three most recent publications of William Stafford's work:
The Way It Is: New & Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 1998)
Crossing Unmarked Snow: Further Views on the Writer's Vocation (Michigan University Press, 1998)
Down in My Heart: Peace Witness in Wartime (rpt. Oregon State University Press, 1998)
And now the more complete list....
*Traveling through the Dark, Harper & Row, 1962.
*The Rescued Year, Harper & Row, 1966.
*The Achievement of Brother Antoninus (edited by William Stafford), Scott, Foresman, 1967.
*Friends to This Ground, National Council of Teachers of English, 1967.
*Allegiances, Harper & Row, 1970.
*Temporary Facts, Duane Schneider Press, 1970.
*Poems and Perspectives, Scott, Foresman, 1971.
*Someday, Maybe, Harper & Row, 1973.
*Going Places, West Coast Poetry Review, 1974.
*Modern Poetry Of Western America: an Anthology, Brigham Young University Press, 1975.
*Late, Passing Prairie Farm, Main Street Inc., 1976.
*I Would Also Like to Mention Aluminum, Slow Loris Press, 1976.
*Stories That Could Be True, Harper & Row, 1977.
*Smoke's Way (chapbook), Graywolf Press, 1978.
*All About Light, Croissant & Company, 1978.
*Writing the Australian Crawl, University Of Michigan Press, 1978.
*A Meeting with Disma Tumminello and William Stafford, Cross Cultural Communications, 1978.
*Things That Happen Where There Aren't Any People, BOA Editions, 1980.
*A Glass Face in the Rain, Harper & Row, 1982.
*Roving across Fields, The Barnwood Press Cooperative, 1983.
*Segues (with Marvin Bell), David R. Godine, 1983.
*Smoke's Way, Graywolf Press, 1983.
*Listening Deep, Penmaen Press, 1984.
*Stories and Storms and Strangers, Honeybrook Press, 1984.
*Wyoming, Ampersand Press, 1985.
*You Must Revise Your Life, University of Michigan Press, 1986.
*An Oregon Message, Harper & Row, 1987.
Writing the World, Alembic, 1988.
*A Scripture of Leaves, Brethren Press, 1989.
*What the River Says (video), TTTD Productions, 1989.
*Kansas Poems, Woodley Memorial Press, 1990.
*The Long Sigh the Wind Makes, Adrienne Lee Press, 1991.
*Hearing Voices (with Roland Flint), Willamette University, 1991.
*My Name Is William Tell, Confluence Press, 1992.
*Getting the Knack (with Stephen Dunning), National Council of Teachers of English, 1992.
*The Animal That Drank Up Sound, Harcourt Brace, 1992.
*The Life of the Poem (video), TTTD Productions, 1992.
The Darkness Around Us Is Deep (edited by Robert Bly), HarperCollins, 1993.
*William Stafford & Robert Bly: A Literary Friendship (video), Reiss Films, 1993.
Learning to Live in the World, Harcourt Brace, 1994.
*Listening to the River: Seasons in the American West (with Robert Adams), Aperture, 1994.
The Whole Wide World Pours Down, Library of Congress, 1994.
Holding onto the Grass, Weatherlight Press, 1994.
The Methow River Poems, Confluence Press, 1995.
*Even in Quiet Places, Confluence Press, 1996.
Traveling Through the Dark, Weatherlight Press, 1997.
*The Last Reading, August 13, 1993 (audio), TTTD Productions, 1997.
*Crossing Unmarked Snow, University of Michigan Press, 1998.
*The Way It Is: New & Selected Poems, Graywolf Press, 1998.
*Down in My Heart, rpt. Oregon State University Press, 1998.
A more complete bibliography -- including out of print books, dissertationsand other publications -- is available from the William Stafford Archives, PO Box 80595, Portland, OR, 97280-1595.
3. A profile of the William Stafford Room, at the Watzek Library, Lewis & Clark College
Permanent Exhibits: West and North Walls
• William Stafford: in the Lewis & Clark College Bookstore, ca. 1960.
• "You Must Revise Your Life": a command, later used as a book title.
~~
• William Stafford on his bike: Albany Quadrangle, early 1960s.
• "Dear Coach Musselman....": WS letter published in College English, April 1955, and later circulated informally, appearing in such places as Sports Illustrated and the Harvard Yardage sports program.
• "Scripture for Our Time": from a talk by WS in the Lewis & Clark Chapel.
~~
• Photo of a writing class: taken by WS in Evans Music Building, early 1960s, in order to remember his students' names.
• "Assumptions about Literature Class": A handout for class with Stafford's habitual invitation to writers and readers, combining playfulness with clarity of deep purpose.
~~
• "From the Shadows....": Stafford's in-class writing while meeting with
students in a Northwest Writing Institute class, early 1990s&emdash;a kind of farewell.
~~
• "Are you Mr. William Stafford?...": the poem WS wrote the morning of his last day, 28 August 1993.
North Wall: William Stafford, Writer and Teacher
• Daily Writing 26 June 1968
• "American Gothic": poem in revision.
• Finished poem: as published in Kansas Poems, 1990.
~~
• William Stafford: teaching on the lawn at Fort Worden, in Port Townsend.
~~
• Daily Writing, 17 June 1956
• "Traveling through the Dark": poem in revision, with the titles of the thirteen magazines which declined to publish it.
• Finished poem: as published in Traveling Through the Dark, which won the National Book Award in 1963.
~~
Special thanks to Brian and Gwyneth Booth, Robert Dusenbery, and the Friends of William Stafford for assistance in appointing this room. Thanks also to Chet Orloff and Jeff Anderson, and to Pam Brown of Thomas Hacker & Associates. Materials courtesy The Estate of William Stafford.
4. Samples of texts by William Stafford from the Archive:
(Copyright©1999 The Estate of William Stafford)
Some aphorisms from William Stafford's daily writings of the 1950s and 60s
Off a high place, it is courtesy to let others go first.It is legitimate to crawl, after the wings are broken.
I follow a trail so old the hounds lost it years ago.
Actors, their relief. I have to be myself with no vacation.
Once you decide to do right, life is easy -- no distractions.
The grace we need to find will not be found by the graceful only.
Prisoners in the barracks camp, we learned why Indians carry blankets -- a home.
It still takes all kinds to make a world, but there's an oversupply of some.
Successful people are in a rut.
Every mink has a mink coat.
Aggressive people do not appeal to me; I yield them scorched earth.
I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.
An untitled poem William Stafford wrote in class while teaching for a night at the Northwest Writing Institute in he last year of his life....
From the soft Oregon night a new shadowconverged with our walk near the library.
In dim light the figure moves easily
along, not toward us or away, but living
its own actions, flickering toward a car
nuzzled to the curb. And it's all easy,
no need for meeting or not meeting this
moving, unknown being.
And a voice comes from the shadow,
tentative and mild: "Is it you? Is it the one
who was here in those years when I
lived in this town?" And the figure
turns quietly and faces us, not moving now,
not reaching out or going away, but waiting.
And whoever it is then quietly rocks
back and forth, and we know it's because
those years have gone, and this person
carries them, simply brings them here
and offers them, no prize, no penalty,
just a reminder the night allowed us.
And we turn, easily, no haste, and go on.
5. Information about joining the "Friends of William Stafford," or securing permission for reprinting texts by William Stafford
To join the "Friends of William Stafford," contact Patricia Wixon, Friends of William Stafford, 126 Church St., Ashland, OR 97520-2649.
Copyrights to William Stafford's writing are held by various publishers, or by the Estate of William Stafford. To secure permission to reprint or quote at length from these materials, we want to help you by providing the following suggestions:
1. for poems in The Way It Is: New & Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 1998), contact Jeff Shotts, Graywolf Press, 2402 University Ave. Suite 203, St. Paul, MN 55114 (651-641-0077 / fax -0036).
2. for other poems and materials, contact Diane McDevitt, William Stafford Archive, P.O. Box 80595, Portland, OR 97280-1595. If you have a tight deadline, you can call Diane at 503-768-7745.
updated: 30 July 1999