I find myself very drawn these days to a volume of William Stafford’s new and selected poems entitled The Way It Is. Stafford was a prolific American poet who died in 1993 at the age of 79. The following poem is one that has become especially important for me:
“You Reading This, Be Ready”
Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life—What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
I love how he starts with a thoughtful, straight-forward question, then follows it up with some beautiful images—small things that one wouldn’t think would be important things to remember. Stafford seems to be trying to rein in those who would seek something more grand in their living and remembering, demonstrated with the gentle chiding of these lines: “Are you waiting/for time to show you some better thoughts?” I love the idea that the now, this moment of awareness, is what counts—the present moment is the world, it is all we have, and we must pay attention so that we can “carrying into evening/all that you want from this day.”
Stafford‘s style is quiet, subtle. His diction has a deceiving simplicity about it, and the words and images simply sing. Here’s the opening lines from “Where We Are”: “Fog in the morning here/will make some of the world far away/and the near only a hint. But rain/will feel its blind progress along the valley/tapping to convert one boulder at a time/into a glistening fact.” Here’s another beauty: “Sometimes the light when evening fails/stains all haystacked country and hills,/runs the cornrows and clasps the barns/with that kind of color escaped from corn…” (“Level Light”). The images are so spare and precise. The speaker’s voice strikes the ear as one that is sure and trustworthy.
Stafford’s poetry makes me want to have that quiet sense of surety in my own work—that steady, unglamorous voice and diction that nonetheless taps deep places in the reader. I like the simplicity of the syntax that somehow creates a certain authority because it’s not trying to do something self-consciously grandiose. I want my own writing to mirror that.
“You Reading This, Be Ready” was written two days before Stafford died. Knowing that causes me to pay special attention, to wonder, even, what this life with words is all about. Would I spend the best part of my day fashioning words if I knew I was so close to the end? Are all these musings with language worth it? The best writing that I read, Stafford being a good example, helps me to pay attention, gives me a sense of necessary beauty (and the older I get, the more beauty and meaning are becoming the same thing for me), and opens me to transcendent things. Thus, reading and writing, for me, become deeply spiritual and open me to God. Is the writing life worth all it extracts? I have to say,”yes,” and Stafford helps me to remember that.
Judy Hougen
Such a graceful poem! I agree that it has a deceptive simplicity-- a poem so spare, so straightforward in its diction, seems to me a hundred times more difficult to write successfully than a flashier, avant-garde sort of thing, where sparkly diction or syntax can stand in for content (or its lack--though of course evading apparent "meaning" is often an intentional aesthetic decision, and not something a poem should necessarily be faulted for). I'm staring at a poem on my wall--one I like, by the way; I don't mean this as critique--by Rachel Moritz, a Minneapolis poet: "There is their mirror-slack / Mandible river like a mood / Of word and not sediment..." (it goes on). And then I think of another of Stafford's best-known poems, "Ask Me":
ReplyDeleteSome 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.
***
I love the openness of Stafford's, the way readers can (and have, for decades) climb right in to the poem. But I do wonder--have some of the images Stafford, as a poet of the 60s, 70s, 80s, rested in, been exhausted? Can we still (and if so, how can we) write plainly about rivers, and expect our words to make a ripple?
Oofta. I am blown away that this man wrote this poem days before he died. What an eery, tragic, beautifully fragile concept. I found it impossible not to straighten up and take a moment to take in his wisdom. The message of "You Reading This, Be Ready" is absolutely propelling.
ReplyDeleteWhat I liked about this poem is that, from what I can tell, William Stafford took it upon himself to ready others. In most poetry I find myself looking into an author's world from the outside in. I find myself looking into a small window as the author experiences the life of their poem from within. This poem is different. In this poem, I see Stafford climbing out through the window and talking a walk with me. He wants me to pause and see the precious life around me that, within days, is slipping from him.
"Will you ever bring a better gift to the world/ Than the breathing respect that you carry/ Wherever you go right now?" This is indeed a reprimand. How many times do we undermine our ability to act because we think something better is around the bend? How many times do we figure that we will have the next chance or opportunity to bring "a better gift?"
From out of the blue a long distance friend sent me this message the other day - "Don't live a life that bores the angels." I hope that my writing and my life takes in the greatness of each moment, that I will not pass away waiting for better opportunities but instead be ever chasing after life, a life meant to be lived to the full.
Hougen, thank you for giving this example and for asking the question - "Is the writing life worth all it extracts?" I am finding that, although it is difficult to conjure up exactly what I mean to convey, I would never be full if I gave up on writing due to its difficulty. "Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in various forms." As for me, I will keep writing, because life without extraction is no life at all.
Monica! Thanks for commenting on my post. It was meant to be an example post (although I did pour myself into it and I love Stafford). I appreciate your thoughts--love the angel comment.
ReplyDeleteThanks! By the time I read through it I liked it too much not to leave a response. I would like to read more from him.
ReplyDelete