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The Earth Says Have a Place William Stafford and a Place of Language University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Fall 2001 The Earth Says Have A Place William Stafford And A Place Of Language Thomas Fox Averill Washburn University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Averill, Thomas Fox, "The Earth Says Have A Place William Stafford And A Place Of Language" (2001). Great Plains Quarterly. 2181. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2181 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. THE EARTH SAYS HAVE A PLACE WILLIAM STAFFORD AND A PLACE OF LANGUAGE THOMAS FOX AVERILL In the spring of 1986, my daughter was almost NOTE four years old and my wife and I were to have poet William Stafford to dinner during a visit Straw, feathers, dust­ he made to Washburn University. I searched little things for a short Stafford poem our daughter might memorize as a welcome and a tribute. We came but if they all go one way, across this simple gem, and she spoke it to him that's the way the wind goes. at the table. -William Stafford, "Note," The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems (1998)1 Later in his visit, Stafford told a story about "Note." He traveled extensively all over the world. Once, in Pakistan, he opened his bags for a customs official. "Books," the man observed. KEY WORDS: Robert Bly, Steven Hind, Kansas, "I am a poet," said Stafford. poetry, Richard Hugo, William Stafford . "And these are your books?" The official pulled Allegiances from a suitcase and turned to "Note." He read the poem to Stafford, then Thomas Fox Averill is Writer-in-Residence and closed the book. "I like it," he said. "Very nice. Professor of English at Washburn University in Topeka, You may go." Kansas. He is author of Secrets of the Tsil Cafe Stafford liked that story because it con­ (BlueHenIPutnam, 2001) and editor of What Kansas firmed his belief in the vibrant, living connec­ Means to Me: Twentieth Century Writers on the Sunflower State (University Press of Kansas, 1990). tion provided by language. Words, after all, are the little things of "Note." When they all go one way, they reveal the big thing-wind, GPQ 21 (Fall 2001): 275-86) place, poem, human connection. 275 276 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2001 FIG. 1. William Stafford. Courtesy of William Stafford Archive, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon. STAFFORD AND THE PLACE OF Poetry series. Writing the Australian Crawl and LANGUAGE You Must Revise Your Life are full of apt meta­ phors. I can say without any problem that the For example, Stafford is starting a car on language is what I live in when I write. ice, developing a "traction on ice between writer and reader," making the reader enter a -William Stafford, Kansas Poems of poem because "the moves ... come from in­ William Stafford (1990)2 side the poem, the coercion to be part of the life right there."3 Stafford wrote a great deal about his writ­ Or Stafford is dreaming, and making fun of ing method, especially in the two books of those who treat dreaming (poetry) as a busi­ prose, poetry, and interviews published by the ness: "You extract from successful dreams the University of Michigan Press in their Poets on elements that work. Then you carefully fash- WILLIAM STAFFORD AND A PLACE OF LANGUAGE 277 ion dreams of your own. This way, you can be journal. He was not writing poetry, he was writ­ sure to have admirable dreams, ones that will ing. He was not crafting poems, he was listen­ appeal to the educated public."4 ing. And what he listened to best was the Or Stafford is swimming: language itself. Other writers have witnessed to the same Just as the swimmer does not have a succes­ thing. Joyce Thompson wrote what I as a writer sion of handholds hidden in the water, but believe. Stafford might agree with much of it: instead simply sweeps that yielding medium and finds it hurrying him along, so the writer The language is often smarter than I am, passes his attention through what is at hand, than the writer is. I often feel like an idiot and is propelled by a medium too thin and savant when I'm writing. It's a very intui­ all-pervasive for the perceptions of nonbe­ tive process. There is a certain abrogation lievers who try to stay on the bank and of ego, and it happens through the agent of fathom his accomplishment.s language. It's difficult to explain that and I'm not sure it's the same for all writers. I Or Stafford is rehearsing: "Maybe it is all know some people feel that composition is rehearsal, even when practice / ends and per­ a real act of arrogance, and assertion of the formance pretends to happen ... Maybe your ego, but I find that when the writing is stumbling / saves you, ... "6 going its best, it's a real absorption of the Or Stafford is revising your life: ego in the task, a laying aside of it. It's a pretty direct exchange between the lan­ We can all learn technique and then im­ guage and whatever envisioned reality there provise pieces of writing again and again, is. I think that's one reason that I like do­ but without a certain security of character ing it so much. I don't get in my own way we cannot sustain the vision, the trajectory nearly as much when I write as I do in some of significant creation: we can learn and of the other things I do in life. There's some­ know and still not understand. Perceiving thing beyond individual self and I think, to the need for that security of character is an extent, I write to experience that.10 not enough-you have to possess it, and it is a gift, or something like a gift. 7 Language is the big sea for human beings. We swim in it, as Stafford said. We trust it, Or Stafford is climbing a cliff in the dark and it holds us up, sustains us. It is so much with scratched, numb hands, muscles crack­ bigger than we are, and it is eternal-having ing. But he makes it to the top, to the finished a long life before us and a long life after us. poem, and shouts, "Made it again! Made it We do not master it anymore than we master again!"8 the water when we swim. But we do get to These metaphors come out of Stafford's know it well, to use its strength, to hone our relationship to language, the paying attention own efforts into an efficiency that makes us to something bigger, becoming aware of what powerful because it is powerful. Sometimes it is big by paying attention to its "little things" is even more powerful than we are. I once and nudging forward based on his listening. asked Stafford if he'd ever written anything he Nothing shows his relationship to language didn't believe, if sometimes the poem dictated more than the manner of his own writing. He he move in a direction that wasn't quite right woke early each morning to write, because, as for him as a conscious person but was right for he says in "Freedom," "most places, / you can the requirements of the poem. He didn't just usually be free some of the time / if you wake answer yes, he answered, "Of course." As he up before other people."9 He sat in the dark, wrote in "Some Arguments Against Good reclining on his couch, filling journal after Diction," 278 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2001 For people, the truth does not exist. But Go back wishy-washy to your sheltered bay, language offers a continuous encounter with but let me live definite, shock by shock. 12 our own laminated, enriched experiences; and sometimes those encounters lead to How wonderful, at the reading the next night, further satisfactions derived from the cu­ when Stafford's poetry lived definite, shock mulative influences in language as it spins by shock, when the jellyfish of talk was re­ out.11 placed by the richness of language. Stafford liked the experience of language The requirement of the poem-to be influ­ so much he gave language and voice to most enced by language-brings one to truth. Writ­ everything around him. His poems go beyond ing what the poem requires is different from personification, that mere literary term, in the manipulating language away from fact or truth. same way belief goes beyond technical expla­ As a writer, Stafford was aware of that sad nation. When Native Americans, for example, manipulation. In fact, he had a suspicion of pay attention to animals, to grass, to wind and idle conversation. He once said that in a dia­ leaf, we don't call it personification, we call it logue he liked to leave with the feeling that "I religion. I don't know what to call this same listened better than he did." attention in Stafford's work, but it lives in I once had responsibility for Stafford when lines like: he visited the University of Kansas.
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