William Stafford: 100 Years of Poetry and Peace

sell this year marks the one hundred anniversary of the birth of one of our state's best loved how it is i'm kay mcintyre and today and one k pr presents we'll find out how washburn university is marking the occasion of william stafford centenary with a day of poetry readings and much more will also hear from pulitzer prize winning author marilynne robinson her book housekeeping was read across lawrence selection for this year marilynne robinson's spoken lawrence on march six two thousand fourteen sponsored by the lawrence public library and the university of kansas libraries we'll hear her conversation with lawrence public library director brad allen later this hour we'll also hear from nebraska author timothy suffered his new book that's one that no life is a love story set at eighty ninety eight world's fair in omaha with a wink and a nod to the wonderful wizard of oz again that's timothy suffered and marilynne robinson later this hour on k pr presents but first washburn

university is celebrating this centennial of poet william stafford tomorrow we'll find out more right after two of his poems asked me and assurance these recordings of william stafford come to us courtesy of lewis and clark college what set library special collections and archives again this is poet william stafford was citing asked me followed by insurance ask me when the river's ice ask me mistakes i have made all ask me whether what i've 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 they're 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 coming as employees from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us the river's years you'll never be along here so deep the standpoint of autumn comes yellow hose across the heroes and dramas are the silence after lightning before it says its name and then the clouds and wide mouth the politics you arranged from birth you'll never be along rain will come a gutter

failed and amazon along aisles you never heard so deep the sound last song rock and years you turn your head that's what the silent man you're not alone the whole wide world horse that's william stafford reading his poems of surrogates and ask mee washburn university is marking what would have been william stafford is one hundredth birthday comedy roast up by the k p our studios to talk about tomorrow's event william stafford one hundred years of poetry and peace and tell us a bit about stafford william stafford was born in hutchinson kansas in nineteen fourteen and so in twenty fourteen right now is the centennial of his birth he was raised in kansas in hutchinson and also spent some time in liberal kansas he went to the university of kansas for his undergraduate degree that was interrupted by world war two

he was a conscientious objector during that war and spent for years in the civilian conservation corps and fairly isolated from the rest of the public during that time as they were and somewhat reviled by the public at that time and when he returned to the university of kansas to get his master's degree he has his master's thesis was a memoir of that experience gone down in my heart which is still in print and he went on from k you and laurence to work to go to university of iowa where he got his phd and and then got his first teaching job at lewis and clark college in oregon may have caught some other places first but that's where he wound up and were basically spend the rest of his life in oregon they claim him as their kind of poet laureate but we claim him dearly s that the true poets are other parties

that the major port of the twentieth century and in in kansas and that's because so much of his work is informed by his past in kansas by his childhood in kansas his family experiences and so much of it is attitude is is so kansas he's he's modest he simple at the same time people call them deceptively simple because there is so much in his work his vocabulary as a kind of kansas vocabulary of grass sky when the sun travel rivers in it end it ended in many ways he was the first one to give to write a major major major poetry using the landscape images and attitudes even the sort of modesty and humility of the midwest and his first collection was called and

it wasn't published until nineteen sixty when he was forty six years old he comes out with a small collection of poems called west of your city is kind of attitude and an unknown you know one of his poems one home star for mine was a midwest home you can keep your world in this notion of see really celebrating the midwest four or four and not just its landscape and its imagery and its subtlety but also its attitude is sort of tolerance and intolerance at the same time there's a great version not religion back home that goes on other ministers drank in a nice smoked thin and there was that woman in the choir but what really finished him he were spat is like the protests isn't this is what we can't stand about

people are putting on the style and sos sos stafford for it for a lot of people like that the first great kansas poet that that everybody has to sort of pass through in some way i mean they're many other great kansas poets of the same generation ronald johnson from the black mountain school michael mcclure the great beat poet i mean there are many kansans langston hughes of course you grew up in kansas but the staffer i think really sets a standard for that midwestern voice someone who has a dark side kansas as a place from which to write so so he traveled back to kansas a lot many of us of opportunities to meet with him and he came to washburn in nineteen eighty six when when i was newly on the faculty at washburn and that added a

gathering of riders that i call the homecoming of kansas writers and william stafford game and kenneth davis a great historian was there and we were you know they're wonderful kind of a homecoming at that time so it seemed natural when it came time to celebrate the one hundred anniversary of stafford birth that we might gather a whole bunch of kansas writers together again at washburn where we have the center for kansas studies and we have you know in our librarian the big ten's a studies collection and then we have some funding to promote kansas advance on washburn paid really good attention as eu membership to being at kansas university and so we have that center for kansas studies in and we have a kansas studies collection and we have a number of faculty and staff are interested in in place and so it seemed natural we've had teams deford wings their first

time at washburn before and i really enjoyed our encounters with him for a brilliant poet on his own but also the literary executor of his father and since nineteen ninety three so for the last twenty one years in some ways he's been to people he's been himself as teacher and writer and he's been the literary executor of his father's massive collection of work a massive archives an and he's overseen the publication of more books by william stafford since william stafford death and most writers write during their lifetimes stafford course a tremendously prolific poet to spend each morning before dawn on accounts writing daily journal many

of which turned into holmes but also many of them ruminations about philosophical ruminations ruminations about his stance towards the world including his activism and toward peace so kim took a bunch of that writing out of his father's german put together a book called every war has two losers and it's full of staffers thought about about about war poetry about war but also this little one lying singers like at least on the battlefield the flaws don't care who won in just again very simple but then that really sets in rebecca howe and his status as a conscientious objector back in world war two when that was a really unpopular position for someone to take how did that affect him as a man and as a writer

he speaks about that and one of the in the videos that not the one called every war as two losers which he also speaks to get to that is you but billion in one of the videos i've seen he talks about being isolated from the world course it's also where he met his wife of so many years dorsey who just died last last fall and it wasn't a wonderful and an able companion to gillian and all all through his career in any rate he he speaks in a video abound about the isolation about developing a sort of colin and so most and the self reflective knows that too that was a kind of protection the view they were always well received when they went into town safe and the concentration camps where they were where they were stationed more

lives yes as a wonderful story and down in my heart about and being sent to fight a forest fire in california and the only people who are available there were males are capable of of fighting the fire our own conscience objections prisoners in folsom prison and military guys who are so wounded that they can't return to the front but they could fight a fire and it describes a moment which they're taking a break and they're talking about their lives together and is this man from folsom says this is a weird he says i'm fighting this fire because i killed someone and you're fighting this fire of bills that are because you refused to kill anyone and in lieu of military ira fighters for because you'd like to be back in action killing people but they won't let you because you how tough enough yet

was a second and the staff were very good observing these days little cracks in the way we think about you know how we can hold two positions in our heads at the same time and it and that's what i like so much about it is thinking and it's what i like so much about his poetry that he sees the surface of things that he always sees underneath the surface of things like a poem like bifocals ins with with something like this the stanzas says and so the world happens twice once as we see it second it legends itself deep the way it is and of course for them stafford used that line the way it is

as though the big anthology he put together of his father's work after william stafford status you'd mentioned kim stafford can will be back on the washburn university campus tomorrow as we celebrate their centennial of when staffers birth tommy well what all is going on a washer and all were worried mostly looking at it as a celebration rather than as a conference we've invited for between forty and fifty writers to come and each morning when and i can't remember how many are agreeing to thirty five or forty of them or reading just five minutes each area is buried one of their favorite poems by william stafford in one of their own poems in order of wayne's dead for two were honoring bill staffer but we're also honoring like he would just the act of making poetry for and bringing people together or have a horrible joke books for sale because kim has probably signaling staffers as prolific there be some books

by some of the authors who will be there so we'll have a book table have readings going on all day long which we have a kind of private lunch for the participants in the readings but there's plenty of lines available and washburn union where all of this is happening there's going to be a documents room where people can come in and records memories of stafford or or bring the like letters they had from him or or the coverage of chap books that they have more scandals in putting men are kansas studies collection were also showing three stafford videos that time star him on poetry and on his writing process and also that film every war has to lose that would be on a constant loop in another room so that people who are not familiar with him and and just the way he is the way he held himself the way he spoke and then take a

break and watch those and then on the big event in the evening at seven o'clock kim stafford will deliver the keynote address you titled you must revise your life one hundred years of william stafford poetry and peace and that revise your life comes from comes from a volume that a collection of critical pieces that pit when staff are gathered together and that was one of his one of his theories is this notion that that good poetry comes out of have a good attitude a good life a good way of being in and then you create the poetry so you're not just revising poetry revising yourself as you through the act of writing poetry about what you think william stafford we would have thought of tomorrow's celebration of his life what he and he loved being around people in

it he said to me was used to being the center of attention because he so often was but everywhere he went he carried a camera for two he was also documenting not himself made documenting other people and in fact i have about fifteen photographs that he sent me in nineteen eighty six after a homecoming of kansas writers early pictures of writers who will be there tomorrow in the slow patricia tracks are hardly elliot for bill myers and here i have these photographs that they built because he was always interested in what other people we're doing and so i think you'd feel right at home we ate we had initially had confirmation that ted kooser would be there a long time us poet laureate he can make it after all because of family matters and that's

a disappointment to us but he was coming and it is a future prize winner and you know he's he was coming just to visit him or ag going on to be the center of attention and there's a there's a similarity between those two riders in their in their attitudes not you know that they're just like the activity of what's going on and it doesn't matter though as of about them so i think i think he's he has a camera fifty be talking to all of us and the day tomorrow starts outlive cancer is the current poet laureate right now only yes' while counties there were gathering around nine thirty registering visiting for a while we're going take people over to our r kansas studies collection which is actually something that i started with with my gathering of four years worth of kansas books

about right now about three thousand books in the kansas studies collection over maybe lovers will be taken people back and forth to the collection during the day and then they were good brief welcome know why it will be what will officially open the conference are really looking forward to her presence there as as the current kansas poet laureate and talking a little bit about portraying indians starting by doing her poem and then a staffer paul minn launching right into the into the morning of readings and just to be clear the public is invited to go yes yes yes all of the events are totally open to the public as a so it may have a little bit of a private eye and a buffet lunch years for a protest vote as a way of paying any everybody's coming because i won't be there you know and in the us that's wonderful so we want we wanted to release feeder reno

the people who sing for their supper but every everything during a day safe from ten fifteen until quarter to twelve and then from one fifteen to four o'clock is free and open to the public people welcome to come and engage in any way they want to and then again can stafford will be speaking at seven o'clock tomorrow night that's right seven o'clock and in washburn room which is is in the memorial union on the washburn campus and will have plenty of seating time to free go let me just ask you best do you have a favorite william stafford palm it i do and many people when you ask them they have lots of favors and many people i know can actually reciting staffer bomb school class it it to a lot of writers get is slightly you know and then a lot of verses like the widow of the bible but that was the one that i like

yeah like for totally sentimental reasons and is very short and so yes it's easy to memorize the one i liked is a short one call know and i like it because when william stafford was was in kansas in topeka in nineteen eighty six my daughter at that time was four years old and then waves ever was coming to dinner at our house and so i said to my daughter maybe you would want to memorize a way and never compensated to him and she wanted to we found a nice short run that is when this is stuck with me for years know strong feathers just little things but whichever way they go at sowing the windows and i like that to focus on his watch looking at small things to see what's really going on and wind is such a powerful image and stanford's poetry as as a force

that is both daunting and comforting and again it's a very simple poem is also one he told me later after my daughter eleanor dowdy avril inner mentor and board for your own voice seth kugel he said later that he too like that coleman part because he was traveling with the state department as he'd add a lot in these cultural exchanges to other countries and the eu is a customs in pakistan and a customs official pakistani customs official was looking through his stuff and spend said many books and staffers and and i'm a poet and d i grab a book out a staffer to bag opening up to the porno for and read it out loud in english and said i like that you may go through and so he felt that it was opponents and move

him like a small thing through a difficult to what could have been a difficult experience for violence are reasons to like that particular poem that's time ever all writer in residence at washburn university and the organizer of tomorrow's event william stafford one hundred years of poetry and piece taking place in the washroom union the public is invited will close this portion of today's k pr presents with one last poem this is william stafford reading at the national monument along the canadian border this is a field where the battle that not happen or the unknown soldier did not this is the field where grass joined hands or no money with stents and the only heroic things the sky birds fly

here without any sound unfolding their wings across the open no people killed her were killed on this ground hallowed by neglect and an heir so tame the people celebrated by forgiving his name william stafford reading happy and national monument along the canadian border you can hear many of william stafford spawns tomorrow at washburn university in addition stafford son kevin stafford will speak at seven o'clock tomorrow evening at the student union and now a very contemporary writer timothy suffered is the author of the swan gondola i met up with him and he's suffered at rainy day books in fairway kansas this book is a love story set at eighty ninety eight omaha at the world's fair what a world's fair that makes its search right breeding grounds for a love story well i think that the stall jake aspect i think there

is definitely a time there's this kind of fairytale magnificence to it i mean even in the descriptions you read in the newspaper about the fear they compared it to a fairy tale a fairyland a magical land and so i think it just kind of begs for a romantic interlude that having been there you know there was a line you know there's the grand court with all its majestic billions of dollars along with a call to libyan down the center of a big the canal that they had gone two years and everything so just there's so much that you know in all the flowers on and so on that kind of whimsical components that went along with that too just really suggests that that that's a place where you should have a summer romance thank you know it's really hard for us to imagine in two thousand fourteen when we're exposed to so much the world through the internet and books and television and movies what world's fair men in terms of

exposing people in all my heart or wherever to survive the magic of the world outside your back door sharon that's where you learned about technology that's where a lot of people would've seen a movie for the first time at the eighty ninety eight raw moments there they would've seen electrical lighting at the level that outdoor you know the flooding of the buildings the gardens at night in the walk in the way that they're seen it before and then a lot of them would have prevented an automobile for the first time and so soon dip in at ninety eight people really felt like with the turn of the century there was going to be in the future was going to happen you know in the past is going to hand and so they were definitely leaning forward into the twentieth century and so in a sense invented the twentieth century from their imagination because it wasn't long after the affair that there were all these major advancements in

medicine and psychology of and changes in fashion and women's rights and come in and so he was so it's everyone's sort of felt poised to to move into the future i think your protagonist is a young man with the unlikely name of ferrets garrett he used both by profession eventful a quest and eight letter writer four high aircraft deal about what about those professions are so appealing as an author will open part of the character you really develops and my thinking about what the wizard of oz whether they like before he went i was in the original book by a french bomb were told that this is a brief bit about the wizards background or were told that he's from a law and that you sing apprenticed with a lot of interest and then became a balloonist and eventually escaped and lend enormous but so pounds i had that in mind does it seem like the world's fair would be the perfect place for

him and onsite things looked into them to a prisoner's can a fascinating time for the third particular bit of into damon vaudeville and sound and sense he also home that the letter writing kind of emerged because it's a first person narration the novel is and so he had to an end and you good is an orphan he wasn't schooled in a sense and so so he really needed to demonstrate the ability to build to tell the story that he's telling such as soap and hands i also saw on an actual had in the omaha bee newspaper the time listeners advertising their letter and services and so i used to ask a slightly changed version of that fair places and to give businesses well said nsa is also mindful of love in the time of cholera since the professional letter writing papers on in the book as well you've already touched on were really drew me into this book which was very

constant references to the wizard of oz what's your interest in the wonderful wizard of oz and and using that as i am not exactly jumping off point that as kind of a recurring theme throughout well i grew up with the wizard of oz but the book and the movie and always thrilled me that that dorothy was in kansas and there was advisory is in a balloon that says steve fehr omaha himself will learn to much more about that was his background from the movie and you are just a little bit more about that in the book but that said that i was just really sensitive to manage a nation and i'm a very curious and they carry that around with me and my life and then when i start a more about the world's fair then those two stories started to come together and so it'd sound anything i had sung not it's a literal see called wizard of oz or prequel i guess is the movie industry has taught us to sets of that stuff the wizard before ours

but now i'm in a kind of i guess answered a realist imagining of how the stories was a vase may have kind of come to be innocents and so it's like a yes that was it was a kind of shadow over the book overall i thought of it almost as a kind of a wink and a nod every once a while yet in those days he in some sense it's a little bit of a puzzle i guess you know and i found in some of the descriptions of the book are inspired by teddy interview denzel is illustrations for the original version which i love so much and also you know those illustrations who really helped shape our visual sense of those characters and so it definitely kept a copy of the book nearby as i was writing and subconsciously you know you'd go in those directions and find yourself writing towards towards was in humans and dorothy in the world so the book opens up

with very scary in this balloon and he lands no spoilers here but he lands on on the farm of the old sisters ii didn't tell me about that we're there yet and it's not a spoiler because it starts out that's how the book starts literally the first moment in the book is when the ferrets building crashes on this farm house in the middle of nowhere and on and he's taken in by these two elderly sisters who moved to the midwest from maine with a promise the plantains and prosperity has so many people that yeah yeah yeah and a lot of people quickly laughter to look at the fact that that these two sisters stuck around and then they had the pharma they try to make it happen and they were also live in trying to treat different kinds of heartbreak that that added their past and so if they see something magical obviously in this destruction of falls upon them and this young man that

breaks his leg in filing from berlin and they take him in and just and said he's served for them it for its presence is is like that they often described as soon as the following from heaven and angie the entire community then comes to see him in that way to you and seek him out for advice and prophecy and he becomes this kind of spiritual touched touchstone for the community the title of the book the fund analyst tommy with what that's all about why there was such a place they're actually wasn't at the latino as i said in the center of the grand court and asked the world's fair the last in a line and out which was a car the tradition for the german soldier wants theirs and a lot of those kind of years would travel from from city to city and sold one of the day one of

the boats on the libyan was a swamp and now it's not as i describe it in the book critics who could've of it is to try to make it a little more a magic because the descriptions you read in the newspapers that i think was actually had like an engine consisted of chugged along through the fact the gears as noisy incident snowing i didn't literally did not smoke through its beak has been one description iran so disappointed with us so it that it's it's i loved was at the heart of it you know the kind of romantic gesture that it sort of suggested and even in the book you know ferris he's a close it's not quite you know that was not quite as romantic as it intends to be and so it gets its it since it sailed up the river basically dipped to get there and so it's a little rough around the edges but the key incessantly that's how they found it is how they articulate their romance basically in a top things begin for them and so becomes another element about the stalls are a lot of the

fair security fears in general are about the building the stalls and you know you go to them so that you have memories in a sense because of the need to kind of at least when i was a kid meant to just sprout up out of an empty field for a couple of weeks or a week in the summer ends but the lights and the noise and the food and uneaten just the lively atmosphere it does get this place where there was nothing before and so naturally than that was a major event in a small town every year do you have a passage from the book you go to read from us sir this is actually when the ferret first sees the grand court and he's he's gone to the fair with delinquent purpose basically on one and two to do some business in to take advantage of that the number of people that they're to do is then to it was enacted in some magic didn't work for tips but also because he's fallen in love with sesame he met her backstage and vaudeville show and he

knows it she's now working at the fair answer is seeking her out birds can but here is where he he first enters the for her on the first day the summer sunlight harsh against the stark wide arch scorched us all those with umbrellas open them filling the air with this region steals spines in the pop of silk pulled taut i started the fee by ducking in and out of the parcels of others my caucus is barely noticing at their sides there were nearly cheek to cheek knocking elbows as i slipped around in their shade i enter the courtyard putting beets some ladies ruffled white parasol my head low to avoid suspicion the lady took my arm mistaking me for a gentleman and she whispered in my ear with a lovely gasp sugar a padded and had somehow got away without noticing that i wasn't hers was i was out from under the umbrellas and perez sells i looked up and saw what she meant the buildings the grand court shimmered with shattered glass that have been tested over the whitewashed dickerson like something from a confectioner shop and those buildings went

on and on about and i was more stunned by the expense of it and all its elegance to attend as the columns and pillars the winding it the rows of flags the statues of winged horses and chariots and bare chested angels and warriors breaking white and shimmering as a chiseled from a salt lick was like looking up on an ancient city before it fell that's timothy seifert reading from the sun gondola thank you so much thank you kansas public radio has an autographed copy of this one got a lot to give away things to the generosity of penguin books if you'd like a chance to win this book go to our website to a pr that hey you got edu and click on ticket giveaways i'm j mcintyre if you're just joining us today as kbr present is featuring riders from poet william stafford to timothy chauffeur to our next guest marilynne robinson robinson won the pulitzer prize in two thousand five for her novel juliet her first novel housekeeping was really across lauren selection

for this year sponsored by the lawrence public library and the university of kansas libraries as part of wheat across lawrence robinson spoke march sixth two thousand fourteen with lawrence public library director brad allen at plymouth congregational church in downtown lawrence and that in a place that's papa grabbed up a graphically like the one i described as keeping the book is not autobiographical and everyone in my family once you know that i went to buy from high school in idaho and i found that the narrative that that idea that i had no conception of the plight of the country that i came from we just wrote most of the country as you know being from kansas but nevertheless i am began trying to describe this place that was so familiar to me and that was so emotionally challenged ferment going

to view for several of family stories and and so many things i knew and that's how sort of started writing that without the idea of without republican they think who are listening and then i when i finish my dissertation years later i am i was i had been put in with the passages of housekeeping in that dress it mean that in a it's abhorrent in my dining room and not knowing that i was actually beginning and now from when i had finished the dissertation and took them out and look at them and i said they declare here around the mood in the you know that the place and i was concerned with trying to evoke and so i went to teach and in france and in exchange after i finished that this occasion and that not a mathematical universe and i went on strike and it was a very

prolonged strike it's different different groups with god strike university over again and i actually have a great deal of time to write and i was sitting out in a farmhouse in the country and it was enough and jessica has windows weight to the car you know the doors or windows the windows americans were extremely exotic beings and so they would come up on the grass like it was a quick glance and my friend was distracting and seven into a back room and i close the shadows of the doors of a room was absolutely black and i had a little wobbly bedside lamp and a spiral notebook and pen and i started writing from that wouldn't taking out from the place where these metaphors would let me

and the fire it was a it was a very strange experience because i would be in the absolute darkness i would think to myself i'm the only person in the universe who is in a dark room in france remembering idaho circumstances my memory was it's a startlingly replete iowa which was a lot of dissatisfaction and reading the book i'm probably had a great deal to do with the quality of the book you know the character that i'm i assumed i was reading in an appreciable book i've been reading you know the new york times book review site and i was reading something that i knew was completely unlike seem to be i was naive enough that that was a disadvantage i spent the rest of my

career tried to make my students know it's an advantage but in any case i am yes i did in massachusetts i can go to a friend of mine who had written a book he wanted to read it and he sent it to have an agent without telling me that meant so the first information that i had was a letter from the agent saying things will be hiked a place but i'm happy to represent that and then she gave it to first passenger rueda first editor who read that accepted it and said this would be the way it sounded in the reviews that are happy to publish it and the review in the new york times has said the analysis and review and

that's basically how the book came into being one thing that i've heard you mentioned before is that the job it appear soft you know many jokes the least yourself that there were embedded in that world the book is as reputation thing rather seriously talk about often obese and so i was wondering you know other parts of the book that you found funny that you feel like no one gets her find quite serious than that that there are these jones had been there that it's a huge huge you you say something that is that you find funny to soften and other party think a very humorous that to reduce emissions well you know i mean he's six and that book with the burden of sadness is no question about that but then that doesn't fit you know prevented from having its humorous moment set up these little clever jokes i would make myself with things like every major scene occurs in one less absolute darkness and that was that's because i was

convinced that was not only reading in an appreciable book but then it would never be filmed i have to admit that you know this seven a train wreck you know moments like that the people they only survivors of understanding at the end of that looking backward etc etc i have a sense of visual jokes of that kind you know what i say and then i was amusing myself at a certain level you do when you're right you know i mean you couldn't you can think oh how can i make this work and then i'm incredibly word for a wonderful about it comes to mind and it seems like something we just drifted out of the sky you know i think but this is the best thing that's happened to me in my life well that's an exaggeration but when massive mood when you're reading you know i mean you can't believe there's an

interaction between between yourself and read every day as the peace advocates for fiction and it's surprising to as a writer and i think practically an incredible say that at its deepest is one where you feel surprised by what you do by what happens in the heat tell us a bit more about just the title of the book and why was titled housekeeping was that something that you you know that it was going to be at its inception or at an editor said that it was going to be your way out and i was this book names well when i was about two thirds of the way through it it was simply named housekeeping i'm again that's one of those things where you know we count on how many people in this audience like bad things that happen and they are but they happen on the authority of it picks up how to explain this i know i got a lot of advice from people that this was a terrible name for a book

you got that lists lists of their nicknames and when you lose that there's maybe something was the name of the book to me and it makes it really make sense because i fly into the keeping of a house in many senses of the faces nothing could do you know i was a recession deepens and that we do it was that thinking way but there's nothing simple about it it's absolutely crucial it's a little you know i don't need to remind anybody know a kind of a hostile planet and we could use an artificial topics you'd know that we can reproduce that nature you know i'll cultivate themselves and so then it's it's a it's so that they cannot if this is really making shelter and then every edifice a secondary to that so you know

the title it made sense to me when it occurred to me i know that it might not be the most likable that i would hear stories about housekeeping being in the hot two section two sections the lone star is about a man who would put it you know as a little bit because they didn't want to be seen just over the book open as keeping things happened and learn they need to speak in the name of the book and now those issues i think pretty well evaporated is there any particular reason for the name finger bone just intrigued by that name was there you know what we did that come from i tended to be named have to body parts

you know flap your bodily that's appropriate means you know i'm a nice person clicking of players those are those kinds of things i am and so it seemed to be a native to the place that it should have that kind of quality a kind of well like you know i am and so oddly enough when i was a very young child a big three i was watching my father changed tire the old way you know you get a tire iron and it was very cold and he got a tire iron and it fell from anti and three times surprisingly equal syllables and to me it sounded like the word fingerboard and you know boston and nine almost like what other things it's got about writing which i recommend to everybody is you have no idea what is in the mind and produced

unlimited to ask another question about places that i've heard of simply wed never been as there'd be very beautiful and that end up a finger bone is as depicted is not beautiful but it seems that that you know it's constantly flooding gets up just full of water it seems to be a tremendously difficult place to stay the idea on the second floor of your house just get by cans of mood why did people stay in a place like that well my family good because it's so beautiful you know i mean that i think a lot of people in this company actually settled at the time it's a political settlement was being done and still to this date because they haven't skied and that i was brought up among people that were extremely conscious of that you know the wild flowers the animals in and also just the spectacular mountains lakes

and you know it's strange that i was letting us keeping in france i'm even winter i came to a place where i didn't know what to do next and that's fine amongst you don't don't worry about that when it happened but i'm more like his son's with me they were little boys then and i wanted to show them the chateau and while so that we weren't in the middle of the winter and most of them are closed from and that mansour welcome are informally called that to my delight the lab was frozen and also in flood and senate can accept that i would spend looking at architecture spent looking at the behavior of flooded water and i went back and let the fed know i was never aware of that happening

on monday lakers and that in fact was made but an incredible amount of research that research and the grateful dead under a leg it didn't happen there was a train went off approach never heard of it before so i was so what was striking what would you to read a piece that came up from the novel i read it this is that track where they survey takes roughly about to see an abandoned homestead and this actually this is a place that actually saw my mother took me for a walk to see this just forgotten house with a stunned chief of the storm and so they're sitting there waiting for their

probe threatens to become a little less and suffer by coral so they stood up and stretch to navigate the sandwich was a smile which was a snow white when teresa evidence to discount the zenith of that was surely know we can go out there and now she said i ferreted out into the valley again and found it much changed it was as if the lab could coax to firing from the forest which before seem to burn and parched itself the question with better colors and water taps the pieces innumerable use paddles i come to it was nice till we said and that's democrats each some with south america so is going on and the seeds line however madden the earth the other rose family vegetable profusion leaves and trees of but firing with a b in such a crack and that

would force each set up to make still open in prisons and fruit heavily with microbes of water peterson guide seven live in that world was silent there would be greater need of slinking for me can blossom into all of the compensation that requires to clothe them to have those like as a thing and its shadow five members of a plumber thomas wheatley is when one wants to taste it and music history factored into so many hues and savers of ripeness of the earth a number of services no anything so utterly this when we like it and you'd lose a foreshadowing the world will be made whole fertile lush for hannah nance has our but to feel it so whatever we may lose they could think gives it back to us again and we bring them having know it learning like an engine foster says smooth sailing here in vince's

widespread berries so that was kind of shrug left without a word i was sad i felt she must be teasing perhaps watching me from the woods i pretended not to know i was alone i could see why so the fat children might come here and churches out once the gleaming wider spoke to the tips offenses rather got the puppet seven and shadows a first at the foot of each tree would come to see it again if i had been somewhere i would have made a statue a woman to stand along the path among the trees children would have come close to look at her about swine flu so bad because she was full of larson morning and looked back but your worth families would gleam in her hair and man who pressed to name her hands

and there would be children are new and her two eleven novel at her for her beauty and two half of her extravagant torments as if they had set the flowers in her hair and so none of the flowers at her feet and they would forgive her eagerly and lavishly for turning their worry though she'd never asked to be forgiven their hands were ice and did not touch them she would be more than mother to them she's so calm so surreal and they search wild an orphan things that's marilyn robinson reading from housekeeping to read across floor and spoke for two thousand fourteen she's speaking here with brad allen director of the lawrence public library this event was recorded march six two thousand fourteen at plymouth congregational church in downtown lawrence before that we heard from timothy suffered author of the swan gondola again kansas public radio has an autographed copy of the swan gondola

to give away if you'd like a chance to win go to our website to a pr that kay youth that edu and click on ticket giveaways and just a reminder from the beginning of today's show washburn university in topeka is commemorating the one hundredth birthday of kansas poet william stafford tomorrow starting at nine thirty tomorrow morning it's a day of poetry readings and much more including gays seven pm keynote address by stafford son kim stafford that's all taking place tomorrow at washburn university student union the public is invited all recordings of william stafford on today's program we're courtesy of them listen for a college what's a library special collections and archives and j mak entire k pr present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas