The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Thu 1/3/2008)

Ask Me

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

William Stafford

************************

:hi:

RL

All will be revealed in time? I'm still trying to figure this one out.

:hug:

http://www.newsfromnowhere.com/sacredblur.html

Born in Hutchinson, Kansas on January 17, 1914, William Edgar Stafford grew up with parents who listened to their children�s ideas. They also loved to read, and would "luxuriate in stories." In terms of literary influences, Stafford consistently claimed his mother to be most significant. His father�s generosity comes through in a story William told of being on a walk with him and seeing a hawk land in a cottonwood across a field. When they approached the tree, his father said, "Bill, maybe your eyes are better than mine. Maybe you will be the one to see the hawk." By such moves his father brought him right alongside him, even as a "partner."

This closeness with his parents and his decision to be a conscientious objector to the Second World War, place him outside the turbulent waters of the majority of the literature during the first fifty years of his life. It�s interesting to note several other poets who were born that same year, 1914: Randal Jarrell, Dylan Thomas, and John Berryman. Jarrell�s work was described as the "poetry of desperation," Thomas�s chronic alcoholism brought about his early death, and Berryman threw himself from a bridge. Not to make light of the very real pain these men experienced, but the contrast to Stafford�s life is stark. At some point he left the "steady" Kansas land and went into the world. Yet within that new vulnerability he drew on his past to make a kind of shelter in the storm. His art is anything but ignorant of the aggression and menacing nature of the 1940's.

In the way he describes his writing time in an interview with Nancy Bunge, he reveals something more of his shelter. "It�s a confirming, satisfying activity to do. And it�s almost devotional. Maybe that�s too strong, but it�s as if a day of my life deserves a little attention from life. It�s my kind of attention to stop long enough, to let the evaluative, the speculative, the exploratory impulses that are native to that portion of my time be manifest in a sustained way so that I can recognize them and get sustenance from them."

While in high school William went on what he described as an Indian vision quest, camping out in the breaks above the Cimarron River: "That encounter with the size and serenity of the earth and its neighbors in the sky has never left me. The earth was my home; I would never feel lost while it held me." Or as he said in his poem "One Home:" "Wherever we looked the land would hold us up." You can see where his steadiness comes from.

Sort of like, "Whatever's gonna happen is gonna happen, when the thaw sets in."
Go with the flow.

Pretty unusual for Stafford, I think. What say you?

I have several of his books on my shelf waiting for me...

RL

I see it as there is so much that goes unseen

yet i am not my mistakes

my life is so much much more

just my read

when i was young.

old enough to wonder what was in store for me.

makes me think of my dad -- a farm boy -- who never really left the farm.

frozen rivers are really something to think about.