[New-Poetry] Stafford the elder

[Millicent Accardi]

I find my worst work gives me permission and space to produce my best work.? Putting the kibosh on any efforts before you carry them out stymies the creative process.? At least for me.


Cheers,

Millicent 


From: Halvard Johnson <halvard at earthlink.net>
Sent: Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:20 am
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Stafford the elder



If writers didn't lower their standards sometimes, then their 
best work would really be their worst.




Hal







McCain / Palin -- Just say thanks but no thanks.

They're a bridge to nowhere.




Halvard Johnson

================

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http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html













On Oct 20, 2008, at 11:29 AM, James Cervantes wrote:



Exactly. ?When I was living in the northwest during the Stafford haydays (heydays?) we all joked about having to get up earlier than Stafford in order to catch the good ones. ?The lower-your-standards thing should be taken with a grain of salt or a single malt. ?It would be o.k. if it didn't continue with editors. 



- Jim


On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 7:59 AM, Halvard Johnson <halvard at earthlink.net> wrote:


What I remember about William Stafford, apart from a number 
of his poems and the fact that his poems were in the Saturday

Review of Literature on an average of every other week, was

that he'd write poems every day from 4 am to 11 am and then

do other things for the rest of the day. His advice to young

writers whose work wasn't coming up to their standards was

to lower their standards. I'd second that. Too many writers try

to write only their best stuff.




Hal









McCain / Palin -- Just say thanks but no thanks.

They're a bridge to nowhere.




Halvard Johnson

================

halvard at earthlink.net

halvard at gmail.com

http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html

http://entropyandme.blogspot.com?

http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
http://www.hamiltonstone.org 


http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html

















On Oct 20, 2008, at 9:46 AM, JforJames at aol.com wrote:









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, this is what I say.



--William Stafford

-
This is one of my favorites by Stafford. He fell out of favor,
it seems to me, because he became the quintessential examplar
of the plain-style lyric poet.?For a time plain-style?was a prevailing 
fashion of the day. (& it got boxed about by both the New Formalists
and the Post-Mo camps.)
Perhaps in these smoke & mirrors?times there will be a return to plain 
(the?poem as clear pane)?and away from obfuscated or oblique.?

Finnegan

-----Original Message-----
From: blacksox at att.net
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Sent: Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:16 am
Subject: [New-Poetry] Stafford awarded $20,000 




Maybe I am alone in my being a fan of William Stafford. 

His work has always been political. Most likely from his

being an conscious objector in WWII. He was never experimental,

but the spirit of his work, to advance the human condition,

stands on its own merit.

?

An Introduction to Some Poems

?


?




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