The more I read this poem—Once in the 40’s by William Stafford—the more I love it. It may seem simple, but it quietly surprised me at the end. I subscribe to the Academy of American Poets newsletter and it appeared in a list of poets whose birthdays are in January. Stafford’s is the 17th.
Once in the 40’s
We were alone one night on a long
road in Montana. This was in winter, a big
night, far to the stars. We had hitched,
my wife and I, and left our ride at
a crossing to go on. Tired and cold—but
brave—we trudged along. This, we said,
was our life, watched over, allowed to go
where we wanted. We said we’d come back some time
when we got rich. We’d leave the others and find
a night like this, whatever we had to give,
and no matter how far, to be so happy again.
—William Stafford (1914-1993)
Bill had married Dorothy Hope Franz in 1944. He must have been 30 at the time, and she 28. Although, Dorothy’s obituary (1916-2013) says they married in 1943. In any case, this poem recalls an event that must’ve taken place once in the 40’s, in the early years of their marriage when they were very much in love and carefree, before they settled down to raise a family. The nostalgia factor makes a lot of sense. It’s relatable.
It also reminds me of being surprised with a nostalgic feeling when reading the last line in Mary Oliver’s poem, Coming Home.
Enjoy more wonderful poems by William Stafford posted here.
My son sent me a link to a quote by William Stafford that Michael Meade had posted on his Instagram. I couldn’t find the source.
Update: Leslie Marlowe sent me more of the quote. I did a search and discovered the poem in The Way It Is, and then online. I include this information in my reply below. It was part of the third stanza of a 24-line 4-stanza poem, Any Time, first published in Allegiances (1970).
“I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.” — William Stafford
The Japanese art of kintsugi
The quote and background image remind me of kintsugi or kintsukuroi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pieces of pottery using lacquermixed with powdered gold, silver, orplatinum. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise. The piece becomes stronger and more beautiful than the original because of its unique imperfections.
To me, this serves as a metaphor for overcoming life’s challenges, scars and all, which build character. When I first saw a piece of repaired broken Japanese pottery using this method, it inspired a poem using one of the forms of Japanese poetry—kintsugi tanka.
A poet of peace
William Stafford responded creatively and with integrity to the challenges life sent his way. He remained true to his voice as a conscientious objector, poet of peace, and the innovative way he taught writing.
For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe— should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
“I give you the end of a golden string, Only wind it into a ball, It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate Built in Jerusalem’s wall.”
As any persistent writer will tell you, when they finally “get it right,” there’s a feeling of euphoria, the metaphorical equivalent of entering “Heaven’s gate.”
Stafford was awake to that revelatory moment when each thread of thought presented itself to him. They would lead to unexpected associations and realizations. In the last poem he wrote the day he died, he said: You can’t tell when strange things with meaning will happen.
Speaking of weaving together a parachute from everything broken, this most popular poem by Stafford, and my favorite, talks about holding onto an unseen thread that’s woven throughout all of life’s experiences.
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can’t get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding. You don’t ever let go of the thread.
Coincidentally, I came across a quote from the Vedic literature that takes this idea of an uncommon thread and extends it to a cosmic thread.
He who knows the fine-drawn thread of which the creatures that we see are spun, who knows the thread of that same thread—he also knows Brahman, the Ultimate. (Atharva Veda Samhita 10.8.37)
One of the first books of poetry I ever bought for myself was You Must Revise Your Life by William Stafford. It was part of The University of Michigan Press series of Poets on Poetry. His poems, essays and interviews on writing, teaching, and performing were a revelation!
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.
I reread his poem, Rx Creative Writing: Identity, and decided to include it.
Rx Creative Writing: Identity By William Stafford
You take this pill, a new world springs out of whatever sea most drowned the old one, arrives like light.
Then that bone light belongs inside of things. You touch or hear so much yourself there is no dark.
Nothing left but what Aquinas counted: he—touched, luminous— bowed over sacred worlds, each one conceived, then really there—
Not just hard things: down on a duck as real as steel. You know so sure there burns a central vividness.
A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.
New York poet laureate Mary Howe’s experience captured in her poem, Annunciation, and her conversations with On Being’s Krista Tippett and The Millions’ Alex Dueben, reveal a profound understanding of how poetry vividly comes to and through us.
William Stafford and Mary Oliver on an inner light
William Stafford describes “then that bone light belongs inside of things. You touch or hear so much yourself there is no dark. You know so sure there burns a central vividness.”
Mary Oliver’s uses similar imagery in her poem, White Owl Flies Into And Out Of The Field: “maybe death isn’t darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us—that is without the least dapple or shadow, that is nothing but light–scalding, aortal light—in which we are washed and washed out of our bones.”
These great poets remind us that, at our core, we are essentially pure light. All they do is listen and tell about it.
Mary Oliver lived her life that way: “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work,” and put it into a 3-line poem, Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. / Be astonished. / Tell about it.
In our efforts to fluently express ourselves, writing, primarily, is a process of self-discovery. Burghild Nina Holzer says journal writing allows us to discover who we are and what we have to say.
Talking to paper is talking to the divine. Paper is infinitely patient. Each time you scratch on it, you trace part of yourself, and thus part of the world, and thus part of the grammar of the universe. It is a huge language, but each of us tracks his or her particular understanding of it.
WHO ARE YOU?, a poem in the film, Words and Pictures, invites us to write and discover who we are. There’s a fascinating story behind it.
In the words of Donald Hall, “Writing is the process of using language to discover meaning in experience and to communicate it.”
A good writer uses words to discover, and to bring that discovery to other people. He rewrites so that his prose is a pleasure that carries knowledge with it. That pleasure-carrying knowledge comes from self-understanding, and creates understanding in the minds of other people.
This is my favorite poem by William Stafford—The Way It Is. I had found a verse from one of the Vedas that extends the theme in the poem to its ultimate conclusion and added it after his poem. I call the grouping uncommon thread … cosmic thread.
Daniel Sperry is an innovative, genre-stretching cellist, composer, and evocateur from Ashland, OR, who specializes in creating Musical Portraits for individuals as markers for special occasions and as gifts for loved ones. He performs all over the country in house concerts featuring these portraits, the poetry of Rumi, Hafiz and others along with his original music, opera arias, and standards.
Below is the last poem William Stafford wrote in his Daily Writings, the morning of the day he died. He was 79 (Jan 17, 1914–Aug 28, 1993).
An unintended prophetic literary epitaph, you wonder if he knew on some deep level that his life was coming to a close?
In a way, the poem beautifully sums up his life as an awake poet, effortlessly creating (It was all easy) from the revelatory moment where, “For that instant, conceiving is knowing; the secret life in language reveals the very self of things.”*
Kim Stafford says a friend told him his father’s “imagination was tuned to the moment when epiphanies were just about to come into being.” Kim continues: At such a moment, ambition could be fatal to what we seek. Take a deep breath and wait. What seeks you may then appear.**
There is a reproduction of this poem in his own handwriting opposite the inside title of his posthumously published book, The Way It Is: New & Selected Poems, William Stafford, Graywolf Press (1999).
There was no title to the handwritten poem, just the date of the entry, 28 August 1993. It appears on page 46, and underneath the date is the title:
“Are you Mr. William Stafford?”
“Are you Mr. William Stafford?”
“Yes, but. . . .”
Well, it was yesterday.
Sunlight used to follow my hand.
And that’s when the strange siren-like sound flooded
over the horizon and rushed through the streets of our town.
That’s when sunlight came from behind
a rock and began to follow my hand.
“It’s for the best,” my mother said—”Nothing can
ever be wrong for anyone truly good.”
So later the sun settled back and the sound
faded and was gone. All along the streets every
house waited, white, blue, gray; trees
were still trying to arch as far as they could.
You can’t tell when strange things with meaning
will happen. I’m [still] here writing it down
just the way it was. “You don’t have to
prove anything,” my mother said. “Just be ready
for what God sends.” I listened and put my hand
out in the sun again. It was all easy.
Well, it was yesterday. And the sun came,
Why
It came.
*Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford, by Kim Stafford, Graywolf Press (2002), page 289, referencing his National Book Award Acceptance Speech in 1963.
**Ibid, page 136. “What seeks you may then appear” and in the poem, “Just be ready for what God sends” remind me of the ancient rishis, the Vedic seers who were so awake inside that they heard the Veda humming to itself within their own consciousness; they cognized the richas, the hymns of the Veda that sought them out.
That quality of wakefulness, innocence and readiness—a subtle receptivity to what may be given, or realized, is described in Rk Veda, 5.44.14: Yo jagara tam richa kamayante. He who is awake, the richas seek him out. (Peter Freund’s Favorite Sanskrit Expressions, page 3.)
See Maharishi Mahesh Yogi describe the process of Vedic cognition during a 1976 European symposium on Science and Consciousness: He Who Is Awake the Hymns Seek Him Out.
We are coming to the end of the year 2014. It seemed like a rough one for many, personally, and collectively for the world. I’ve finished reading A Year With Hafiz: Daily Contemplations, translated by Daniel Ladinsky. There is usually one poem a day per page. It was a gift from friend and author Steven Verney. Here are 3 poems towards the end of the book, end of the year, that talk about endings, and, in a way, new beginnings. May they inspire you as we transition into the new year, and for some, into a new life in 2015.
A Prayer I Sometimes Say
It is the Beloved who is revealed in every
face, sought in every sign,
gazed upon by every eye, worshipped in
every object that is adored, pursued in the
visible and in the unseen.
Not a single one of His creatures, not a
single one, my dears, will
fail to someday find the divine Source
in all of its primordial and glorious nature.
And be forever united with the Infinite,
because that—God—is really you.
Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi, look what your
words have become—the restoration of
Truth, the regeneration of Life itself.
December 23, page 391
* * * * *
The Tender Mouth Of The Earth
What will the burial of my body be? The
pouring of a sacred cup of wine into the earth’s
tender mouth and making my dear sweet lover
laugh one more time.
What is the passing of a body? The glorious
lifting of the spirit into the sacred arms of the
Sky, and making existence smile, one more, one more time.
December 28, page 396
* * * * *
A River Understands
I used to know my name. Now I don’t. I
think a river understands me.
For what does it call itself in that blessed
moment when it starts emptying into the
Infinite Luminous Sea,
and opening every aspect of self wider than
it ever thought possible?
Each drop of itself now running to embrace
and unite with a million new friends.
And you were there, in my union with All,
everyone who will ever see this page.
December 29, page 397
* * * * *
One poem about a river is beautifully told by William Stafford in his poem, Ask Me, where he looks to the stillness in the river to inform him, and the person asking him about his life, and, in a way, the creative process in the moment. Another poem of his, Something That Happens Right Now, also leaves you with a similar unbounded feeling as this last Hafiz poem does.
See other inspiring poems by Hafiz, translated by Ladinsky, posted here.
“Today” is a beautiful poem written by William Stafford, selected from his book My Name is William Tell by Beth Atchison and contributed to Panhala, which is how I found out about it today.
Today
The ordinary miracles begin. Somewhere
a signal arrives: “Now,” and the rays
come down. A tomorrow has come. Open
your hands, lift them: morning rings
all the doorbells; porches are cells for prayer.
Religion has touched your throat. Not the same now,
you could close your eyes and go on full of light.
And it is already begun, the chord
that will shiver glass, the song full of time
bending above us. Outside, a sign:
a bird intervenes; the wings tell the air,
“Be warm.” No one is out there, but a giant
has passed through town, widening streets, touching
the ground, shouldering away the stars.
Below are a few of many quotes by famous writers on writing found in Learning by Teaching, Selected Articles on Writing and Teaching, by Donald M. Murray. When I volunteered to become a writing facilitator at MIU in the mid-80s, this was our bible. It had a huge transformational effect on me. I used these writing principles when I helped young students write at the Sylvan Learning Center in North Vancouver, BC, Canada. I also learned writing techniques from Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg, and shared them with my students, and later in other writing workshops with older animation students, and friends.
The whole idea is to facilitate the writing process, to see what it would reveal to the writer, rather than focus on producing a specific piece of writing. I remember reading what Donald Graves had to say about teaching writing, something like: “If you take care of the writer, the writing will take care of itself.” Donald Graves studied with Donald Murray, and went on to conduct research in the classroom on how to teach children to becoming writers. His seminal book, Writing: Teachers & Children at Work, has become a classic and revolutionized the teaching of writing in schools.
Here’s what some famous writers, poets, and playwrights have to say about their writing process.
Edward Albee: Writing has got to be an act of discovery. . . .I write to find out what I’m thinking about.
C. Day Lewis: First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it….we do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.
William Faulkner: It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.
E. M. Forster: Think before you speak, is criticism’s motto; speak before you think is creation’s.
Donald Hall: A good writer uses words to discover, and to bring that discovery to other people. He rewrites so that his prose is a pleasure that carries knowledge with it. That pleasure-carrying knowledge comes from self-understanding, and creates understanding in the minds of other people.
William Stafford: I don’t see writing as a communication of something already discovered, as “truths” already known. Rather, I see writing as a job of experiment. It’s like any discovery job; you don’t know what’s going to happen until you try it.
Writing is a series of letting go’s
of our preconceived notions of how it goes
and allowing a deeper part of you to tell you what it knows;
when the writing’s good, it shows.
Because, ultimately, when we do,
that recognition of what’s true,
comes from the deepest part of you.
So let the writing speak to itself,
and let the writer listen, for
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