A Course in Creative Writing
They want a wilderness with a map—
but how about errors that give a new start?—
or leaves that are edging into the light?—
or the many places a road can’t find?
Maybe there’s a land where you have to sing
to explain anything: you blow a little whistle
just right and the next tree you meet is itself.
(And many a tree is not there yet.)
Things come toward you when you walk.
You go along singing a song that says
where you are going becomes its own
because you start. You blow a little whistle—
And a world begins under the map.
—William Stafford
Also see William Stafford—You and Art
January 25, 2012 at 6:23 pm |
[…] idea of allowing, even encouraging writing to come spontaneously reminds me of a poem written by William Stafford—A Course in Creative Writing, in response to educators at a conference expecting writing instructors to clearly spell out how […]
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June 29, 2014 at 7:17 pm |
[…] the person I was when I was writing before. I wasn’t in the same body. I wasn’t walking the same world. It’s hard to give a perfect description of what happened. There was the disillusionment of […]
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March 18, 2015 at 11:40 am |
[…] That’s how he wrote poems, early every morning. Enjoy reading these William Stafford poems, A Course in Creative Writing, and You and […]
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April 13, 2019 at 4:30 pm |
[…] He acted instead as a facilitator to help them discover the writing process for themselves, to find their own voice (A Course in Creative Writing), to let the writing take them where it will (You and […]
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November 30, 2020 at 1:06 pm |
[…] I was discovering the writing process at the time and how to facilitate it, and found Stafford’s poems and his thoughts on the teaching of writing poetry to be very relevant. Here are a few that caught my attention: When I Met My Muse, You and Art, Ask Me, and A Course in Creative Writing. […]
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January 25, 2021 at 10:42 am |
[…] of those poems that stand out for me are: When I Met My Muse, You and Art, Ask Me, The Way It Is, A Course in Creative Writing, and Rx Creative Writing: […]
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