Roving Across Fields: The work of William Stafford

Roving Across Fields
The work of William Stafford

Edited by Thom Tammaro

Barnyard Press,  1983

I recently picked up a slim volume from my local Friends of the Library book sale here in Okemos. Hahaha, I actually was confused. I was thinking of Wallace Stegner. So I ended up learning more about William Stafford and his place in the world of poetry. The book was published locally in Daleville, Indiana, I’m assuming by fellow pacifist poets and English profs. The book was signed by the editor Thom Tammaro who included a group interview with Stafford.

The book begins by recalling meeting Stafford at a professional gathering in Chicago 1976. Tammaro’s observations seem almost naïve compared to today’s world of constant screens and algorithms. “Miraculous in the Common.” “Stafford’s poems draw together the seemingly disjointed experiences of life and transform them into a spiritual unity. His poems are important events which bear witness to a greater beauty which lives in the world.”

See what I mean?

Stafford shared in the interview that he did a lot of composing while roving across fields, while out walking with his mind elsewhere. Meditative poems, I suppose. A lot like prayer.

Stafford said this in a 1971 interview:

I keep following this sort of hidden river of my life, you know, whatever the topic or impulse which comes, I follow it along trustingly. And I don't have any sense of its coming to a kind of crescendo, or of its petering out either. It is just going steadily along.^{[ "Modern American Poetry]}

From Wikipedia: He kept a daily journal for 50 years, and composed nearly 22,000 poems, of which roughly 3,000 were published.

This represents a lot of walking. A lot of seemingly wasted time. A lot of letting one’s mind go. Allow room and space for thinking. How many of us are willing to take up this kind of challenge today?

As someone who loves to ride her bike or go for a long run, I find it difficult to get out every day, let alone rove. I am starting to see, though, the importance of these blog posts—as one way to document my wandering thoughts on art and the creative process. Writing as exercise. A daily discipline. A clearing of the senses, like blowing one’s nose. Getting the stuff out. Stafford resided in Oregon where it rains most of the winter, I imagine he had Gore-Tex or a good set of waterproofs.