Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1981 The orF giving Landscape: the Poetry of William Stafford. Malovika Mukerji Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Mukerji, Malovika, "The orF giving Landscape: the Poetry of William Stafford." (1981). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 3611. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/3611 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This was produced from a copy of a document sent to us for microfilming. 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ZEEB ROAD, ANN ARBOR, Ml 48106 18 BEDFORD ROW, LONDON WC1R 4EJ, ENGLAND Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8117641 M u k e r j i, Ma l o v ik a THE FORGIVING LANDSCAPE: THE POETRY OF WILLIAM STAFFORD The Louisiana Slate University and Agricultural and Mechanical ColPhD. 1981 University Microfilms International300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, M I 48106 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. \ T H E FORGIVING LANDSCAPE: THE POETRY OF WILLIAM STAFFORD A Diaserfca'hi on Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Malovika Mukerii- B.A., Pern jab University, India, 1974 M.A., Louisiana State University, 1976 May laai .. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my indebtedness to my major professor, Donald E. Stanford, for his unstinting help to me in writing this dissertation. I would also like to thank Professors Max Webb and Rebecca Crump for reading the manuscript and making helpful suggestions. My thanks are also due to Pushpa Naidu, Sheila Kulkarni, Satyajit Verma, Stephen 0. LaBreche, Pay Rifkind, Cathy Edmonston, and most of all, to my parents, for offering me various kinds of support. Finally, I must express my gratitude to the subject of my study, William Stafford himself, for his prompt reponses to my many queries about his work. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS A b s t r a c t ........................................... iv Chapter I: Introduction ............................ 1 Chapter II: The Nexus of Images: The Bestiary .... 5 Chapter III: The Nexus of Images: The Forgiving L a n d s c a p e ....................................... 48 Chapter IV: The Poetry of Statement: The Socio-Political L a n d s c a p e ...................... 108 Chapter V: Allegiances and Connections: Some Thematic Patterns .............................. 171 Chapter VI: Poetry as Process: Considerations of S t y l e ........................................ 200 Bibliography . .................................. 241 V i t a .............................................. 249 iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT There is a wholeness and a sanity in William Staf­ ford's vision that arises out of his allegiance to the authentic elements of our experience. These elements include the vital but continually imperiled wilderness, the human landscape of the past comprised of family, friends, and lovers, and the eternal and inescapable rhythms of time, death, mutability, and terror. In his own words, Stafford is seeking to embody in his work "the unanalyzed impressions of holiness" that the world thrusts at him. By temperament and by choice, Stafford is alienated from the so-called confessional school of poetry. Instead, he writes in the tradition of the concerned poet who gives voice to the urgent concerns of society. His social and political interests are three-fold. He is a pacifist by conviction, and therefore opposed to war, nuclear pro­ liferation, and to all the destructive consequences of an increasingly sophisticated technology. He is also in the great tradition of the naturalist poet, observing and incorporating natural phenomena into his work, and com­ mitted to preserving the mystery of the wilderness. In iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. this respect he is in the Romantic tradition of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Finally, Stafford is still profoundly moved by the "idea" of America, and his poems are an attempt to grasp the essence of the land. The last, doomed symbol of this quintessential and "original” America is the American Indian, whom Stafford takes as preceptor and guide. In poetic technique, as in every aspect of his work and life, what is of supreme importance to Stafford is the process itself. Poetry is process, and it is foolish to formulate preconceived notions of order and impose them on reality. The form of a poem arises naturally out of the poetic experience itself. Thus his poetry shows some technical affinities to the projective verse of the Black Mountain School of poets. But ulti­ mately Stafford's-poetry cannot be labelled. He is the least dogmatic of poets. He happily uses a great variety of verse forms and is a skilled craftsman, but he habitually denies a preoccupation with form. He is significant because his work is permeated by a social and political awareness of the world and by a rich particularity of details. This particularity has waned over the years, and his latest volume occasionally gets mired in abstraction and prosiness. But the control­ ling vision of an essentially benevolent landscape still persists. v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The question that was most commonly asked of me when I decided to study the poetry of William Stafford for the purposes of my dissertation was "Why Stafford?" I interpreted this query to mean: "Why should an Indian be so obviously drawn to the work of William Stafford?" The question was most natural under the circumstances, and in my attempt to answer it coherently, I was propelled in many useful directions. We who grew up in India did not witness the complete separation of a poet from his society that is so evident in England and in America. For better or for worse, the poet rejected the isolationist stance, denied himself a hermetic existence, and tried to integrate his poetry into the life of his community. Even today there is a strong tradition of the committed poet, committed not only to a political ideology but also to the larger concerns of society. Poetry readings in the vernacular are widely attended, and not only by the intel­ ligentsia. The poet is seen as a spokesman, a performer, an intellectual, even as a lovable fool, but always as an 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 accessible and passionately feeling being. Separate from the conception of the poet but linked to it is the nature of the poetry that is demanded. In India where the horror of existence is daily forced upon one's consciousness and there are few buffers to cushion the shock of discovery, we are naturally impatient with a poetry that is part escapist fantasy and part obsessive self-disclosure. We reject the lilacs and the "metaphysics muffled in poppies" that Pablo Neruda has scathingly written of. We demand the "bite" of reality; we insist on a poetry with a cutting edge. I believe that this is also true of Latin American cultures as well as of certain European countries, in other words, wherever people live and die amid a more politicized reality. Stafford approximates the Indian ideal of the poet at ease with his material and with his role as the voice of his community. He addresses himself to issues that go beyond private pain and narcissistic reverie.