“An Archival Print” by William Stafford: God snaps your picture—don’t look away— this room right now, your face tilted exactly as it is before you can think or control it. Go ahead, let it betray all the secret emergencies and still hold that partial disguise you call your character. Even your lip, they say, the … Continue reading A Poem For Thursday
“Evidence” by William Stafford: First, this face—history did it, winters, two world wars, long days bent in the fields in the sun, a few blows, fear, sorrow. This face is evidence left over when those years denied what happened and stole away, the shell still whispering of treasure and wreckage in the sea. And then … Continue reading A Poem For Sunday
A Dish reader recently alerted us to the fact that 2014 is the centennial anniversary of the poet William Stafford’s birth in Hutchinson, Kansas. (He resided in Oregon for most of his adult life, was named Oregon’s Poet Laureate in 1975, and died there in 1993.) In 1998, Graywolf Press published The Way It Is: New … Continue reading A Poem For Saturday
Traveling Through The Dark, by William Stafford. Traveling through the dark I found a deer dead on the edge of the Wilson River road. It is usually best to roll them into the canyon: that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead. By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car … Continue reading A Poem For Sunday
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