William Stafford: 100 Years of Poetry -- Part One

happy national poetry month i'm kate mcintyre and today and katie are present we celebrate the life of one of our state's most beloved poets this year william stafford would have turned one hundred years old and in celebration washburn university hosted a day of poetry readings and reflections on today's program we'll hear from dozens of poets from across the state who took part in william stafford one hundred years of poetry and peace will also hear from his son author and poet james stafford who was the keynote speaker at the washburn university of then on march thirty first two thousand fourteen stafford was born in hutchinson kansas on january seventeenth nineteen fourteen and grew up in liberal garden city older radio and a number of small kansas towns he earned both bachelors and masters degrees from the university of kansas during world war two he became a conscientious objector working in civilian public service camps from nineteen forty

two to nineteen forty six he was forty eight years old when his first book of poetry was published that collection traveling through the dark won the national book award in nineteen sixty three in nineteen seventy he was named poetry consultant to the library of congress a precursor to today's us poet laureate he spent much of his adult life in the pacific northwest where he taught at lewis and clark college in oregon in nineteen ninety two he won the western states book award for lifetime achievement in poetry during his lifetime stanford published about fifty books of poetry many more have been published since his death in nineteen ninety three in just a minute we'll hear excerpts from that was when university event celebrating the life and poetry of william stafford but first a few of his poems in his own voice these recordings are used with special permission from the lewis and

clark college what the library special collections and archives ask me some time when the river's ice ask me mistakes i have made ask me whether what i've done is my life others have come in their slow way into my thought and some of 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 comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us what the river says that's what i said

to me this monument as for the unknown good and our enemies like a picture or a life began to appear they gathered at home in the evening and saying another feels this on his gun only came and they carry of the baby to the park for a party some lights around it here we glimpse what our minds long turned away from the great mutual blindness darkened that sunlight in the park and this guy that was new and the holidays those monuments serve the one

afternoon we stood here and only one us that's william stafford reading to his poems for the unknown enemy and ask me these recordings come to us courtesy of what's a library special collections and archives at the lewis and clark college in portland oregon dozens of poets from across the state and country gathered at washburn university and march thirty first two thousand fourteen to celebrate the life and poetry of william stafford who would have turned one hundred years old this year his son kevin stafford was the keynote speaker at that event here

he shares a william stafford story about growing up in hutchinson on their first day of high school in the prairie or the tree was i stood in the sound of the flagpole and watched but pretended not to watch the others they stood in groups and talk and knew each other all except once a girl though in a faded blue dress carrying a sack lunch i'm standing near the corner looking everywhere but at the crowd and i talked to her i thought but of course it was out of the question that first day was easier when classes started some of the teachers were kind some more frightening some other students didn't care about a listen to and wave it and at the end of the day was relieved less conspicuous from them now well when my daddy won the national book award that was a

disaster for his family because and he was god he began to travel places like kansas began to call him up asked him to come into being a wanderer he said ok we often didn't know where he was wasn't his way to call home and so he was out there of fame i think is a little bit hard for him he was a lot harder to do the prison at the edge watching but gail research corporation asked him to write his autobiography and we want to put it in a contemporary author series so i school students wrote in their term papers can look up things about you so you started typing away they said they won sixty pages he paid forty five he was only fifteen years old and i thought whoa wait a minute what about the great

depression what about world war two about being a conscientious objector what about going to college what about my career what about my writing about my publications you realize for a writer most of the really important things had been registered in his life by the time he was fifteen he would go back to those things again again let the bucket of memory down into the well pull out of cool moments so sorry he's gone fifteen years now as the fight that this is the most and apologized william stafford oh he didn't think it was all a great view he follows kennedy's siegel it is a landmark fifteen ms erin hutchinson seventeenth and people going on seventeen i was like people

fifteen south of the bridge on seventeenth i found that in the willows one summer day a motorcycle with engine running as it lay on inside taking over slowly in the high grass i was fifteen i admired all that pulsing blame the shiny flags that in your headlights french word play i let it gently to the road and stood with that companion radio unfriendly i was visiting we did find the end of the road to meet this guy on out seventeenth i thought about deals and padding the handle got back a confident opinion on the bridge we adults a forward feeling a tremble i was fifteen back farther in the grass i found the owner just coming to where

he had slipped over the rail he had blood on his hand was pale i helped him walk to his machine he ran his hand over it called me good man roared away i stayed there fifty wasn't a heightened sense of years ago a retired schoolteacher took me aside secure i i need to tell you a story about people she says the bill was here one time and i just couldn't help but i ask him bill did you really find the motorcycle on route seventy they say was walking out there and there was a result rusty bicycle down in the ditch ian stafford is the son of poet william stafford and was the keynote speaker at washburn

university is a celebration of the life and poetry of william stafford more than thirty writers gathered on march thirty first two thousand fourteen four william stafford celebrating one hundred years of poetry and peace each of the participants write a poem or two of william stafford and then many read a poem of their own inspired or influenced in someway by stafford's work among them robert day best known for his nineteen seventy seven novel the last cattle drive days splits his time between maryland and his ranch in western kansas here he reads two poems by william stafford a love poem and an elegy they are walking along those not quite close worry we both know he was quite close to his big as time to notice it's intolerable snow innumerable intelligent information

that is kind of those laws say the freezing snow hasn't in jordan's films great owen wilson that has fallen through maybe there are trumpets in the house as we pass the red bird watching from an overbearing but nothing will happen until we pause to flying what we know before and they should not happening weather report like when they grab her birthday so low in vermillion forty degrees of lost boy austin the bounce hovering over finds a voice that great sled dog shows running for a vigil of all who here floyd called

the world all going great the frozen newsworthy there was other rubber date reading to william stafford poems weather report and near our next poet is david ten men have to pique our winner stafford was poet laureate of oregon and this was delivered before the oregon house session fourteen april nineteen eighty seven this hall recalls that one where warriors watch the sparrows fly from darkness and disappear into the night that flights symbolized the life how every person appears from the unknown enjoys life impose alone away from this world into the dark only the people voted of the animals who aren't there and the salmon testing silk in their whole rivers even the trees deserve a place and the hills maintaining their part while the rocks are quietly mentioning integrity and kansas the lesser

prairie chicken has no birth certificate they get no no this is our goal to turn enabled through wordsworth what he found when an old man now he opened the drawer to disprove the nieces sharp incredulity you wrote poetry no one expressed interest in reading what he had written white young and so we put away the clothes the drawer and never opened while the forgotten poet age ritual mouse pete the stench of it everywhere terms like thoughts like periods displaced from him that fragmentary sentences pages shredded from as very good as my poetry money pull out the entire drawer which you carried with two hands and set upon the table and my critics are you see nobody asked

you ask and in return i discovered my poetry transformed the good news for him a few states do you know this must be a rare and co owns the castle obviously delighted to be a mouse curled with in a poll and this is william stafford a gesture toward a month our renaissance i worked with severe remotely and kept his fighting it means that there was a slow girl in our class less able to say where there are lessons that we learned so fast she could not follow us but at the door each day i looked back at her rich distress knowing almost enough to fund a better art inside the lesson and then late at night when the whole town was along the current below the wrong billy bridget

main street would give an extra swirl the durable ones the pilings and at my desk at home or when our house opened above my bed or the stamps i would hear that one intended lonely sound the signature of the day the ratchet of time taking me a step toward here now and this looks bad through the hallways that's david heyman of topeka reciting william stafford spawn a gesture toward in and found renaissance and j mcintyre if you're just joining us today is k pr presents celebrates the life and work of kansas poet william stafford to commemorate what would have been his one hundredth birthday this year washburn university hosted a daylong event of poetry and

reflections on march thirty first two thousand fourteen the day feature dozens of poets who read a poem or two of william stafford then a poem of their own inspired by his writing roy beck meyer of wichita or read stafford's poland it still happens now and then his own going home one of my favorite is william stafford poems is called it still happens now and it's a particular part of poem i think because it not only reflects ms homans feelings world but also touches on his role as a conscientious objector and its relationship to home because of that do you really want it's terrible street is that shield day after day for years and fall into the sky so one around and even if i shut my

eyes the lilacs comfort item and pauline's old house haunts by a long low lying as i fit for my life while for the safety you know far from a thousand hertz both are still open long lines leading after my last bought one more came and we left all that stephen and put the window there are many lines that and for the next four years you make me want to a girl who was going home there's no anonymity in a small cell were christians though might just as well be a porter everyone recognizes my father's uses right right right in case

the jet as it staggered jr smith's but i don't think it goes so here i am i have wandered the world but we'll always a lot of this dark framed house where the swing wrote dane coles and corn all the us have who wants to do a traverse on my father's morning edition this idea of the town has a population one thousand for a lot of soldiers stock rose search of memorials for one particular face i know was the youngest son on the day when i was born that meyer lives in wichita and from manhattan but deitch teaches creative writing and literature at kansas state university i'm going to read a poem that my father wayne dyer

asked me to read at his father's funeral my father grew up in oklahoma and when i first moved to kansas and began to tell him things he would say yes the farm on the great plains a telephone line goes all birds try to wherever it goes a farmer back of the great plains person end of the line i call that farm every year are reading and listening still know when his home and farm the line it's only a home sale here i will bring the line on the night at last the right time and then i take word for grail from the phone on the wall to see that tension wanes the last one left of the place through that are my grail i lovingly touch his face

hello his mother at home no one is home today but father he should be there no one no one is here are you the one because both ends will be home knows space no there's no farm myself will be the plane while others winters gray you were as cold posts go chasing toward what i know and this is michael i'm imagining the journey west somewhere outside the inside walls and windy incessant woman caught in the honduran president could lose everything she had been once prairie fire water's surface erasing the image like memory

can't eat i was waiting in the tall grass to the blank pages start blair one western morning in front of the house i face eastward envision leaving ohio by waggoner but toward the phone or trillions articulate springtime arrival before the gary and the spatter of raindrops sunday apples snow light on dogwood and leaving my father his hand holding forever its two syllable gesture farewell bow leaving in such continental distance i would always carry that moment my last connection to the voice that name to me elizabeth died teaches creative writing and literature at kansas state university eric mchenry also teaches poetry and writing he spent at washburn

university since two bells and nine mchenry was one of the only participant at this event to recite here's william stafford poem from memory here's eric mchenry with the rescue gear taken all of the world so big as the world pastor han rest back that area in the west were no one load a place only your mind explores on your phone that smudge becomes my ignorance abadi the size of colorado for that state by train we cross our state like birds and launched the year my sister gracefully grew up against the western boundary or my father had an all time should go the way it went back here we were to war we had each day a treasured and importance the sky was so dark

library every day at school or at least in the halls in church i heard the preacher he said on her with a sound like empty silos repeating the lesson for a minute i held kansas christian all along the santa fe my father was busy as i knew and going home is wonderfully level days would hold the state i liked to wear little happen and much was understood i watched my father's finger markoff huge ice stands of what happened in the creek like him i tried i still try set my sights like a million pickpockets up rich people and drives this time when i pass for every place i go to be alive around any corner my site of the

river and i let it ride rich by those broke his thought port for hours into my hand history had the greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand that christmas mother made paper president's we colored them with crayons and hung up a tumble week for a tree a man from cuba and brought my sister president as farmers tilled the near oil wells is foreign or the little bumps along our drive nothing came of all this it was just part of the year i walk out where a girl i knew would be we cross the plank over the ditch to her house there was popcorn on the stove and her mother recalled the old days inviting me back when i walk home in the cold evening snow the blessed we'd had rolled along the highway seeking furrows and all the houses have their lights or that year did not escape me i robbed a wonderful old lamp of our

bill town that's bringing across the state again my father sealing us with stories the river last in utah underground they've explored only the ones they've found and that old man who spent his life knowing unable to tell how he knew i'd been sure by small persuaded by mist or a cloud or a name once the truth was ready my father's while the us didn't care about in all his way as i hold that rescued here comes that smoke like love into the broken coal reforms the jumps again and lives in the earth again and it's been ford's and comes a sound then shapes to make a whistle fate and in the quiet i hold no need no hurry at any data industrial move maybe

subtle the train that left will roll back into our station the main card on the platform and filled with ray and the sound that followed the couplings back and report forward and hold the training that's the rescued year were cited by eric mchenry of washburn university the english department israel wasserstein also teaches at washburn university he was one of several poets at the stafford centennial who found inspiration in william stafford spell m report too crazy horse all this you were defeated are clan got poorer but if you've got richer they fought two wars i did not take part no one remembers your vision or even your real name now the children go to town and white loud music i married a christian

crazy horse is not fair hi and new vision from you in our schools we are learning to take aim when we talk and we have found out our enemies they shift when words do they even change and hiding in every person a teacher here says hurt or scorned people are places where real enemies high he says we should not hurt or scorn in you one but health and i will tell you in a breakaway the way crazy horse talked that teacher is right i will tell you a strange thing at the rodeo close to the grandstand i saw perform lady scared by a blown piece of paper and at that place courses and policeman were no longer frightening

but suffering faces war and the hunched over backs of the old crazy horse tell me if i write these are the things we thought we were doing something about in your life you saw many strange things and i will tell you another now i salute the white man's flag but when i salute i hold my hand alertly on the heartbeat and remember all of us and how we depend on a steady pulls together there are those who salute because they fear other flags or mean to use our city i must not allow my part of saluting to mean this all of our promises are generic sayings to each other are honorable intentions those life forms when i salute at these times is like saying

my eyes and joining a religious colony at prayer in the gray dawn in the deep files of the church now i have told you about new times yes i know others will report different things they have been caught by many ways i tell you straight the way it is now and it is our way the way we were trying to find the choke cherries along or bowing still bear right from which there is good pottery playing with here i remember are all places when i pass the mussel shell i run my hands along those old truths in the rock and says michael reporter wayne stafford in which i take a really inappropriate liberty fisherman you live long and carefully you knew the currently and

how it can call all through long january night's how sometimes settlers would listen and step from their houses thin topsoil crunching under boots or rising to meet their toes and in the morning there would be no trace of their passing the storm does this i have listened to the winds song and i do not think i was so long it does not concern me but this i'm a church in a decade of madness assaults on the enemy we were told was hiding in desert rat holes or mountain caves where people hold centuries old ways and old are grudges the words you say this think we are different i do not know who they mean by we they fight a concept a tick go into fat on

assassinations uranium shells drone strikes this is a convenient way of killing as impersonal as any strip mall no one can tell me if they believe they will win if they think fighting makes them stronger you have been gone twenty years now more than twenty the award the peace prize to men who have done nothing and worse than nothing the wind does not care about mr nobel it does not care about you bill or me he is the wind i do not know if the monsters can be overcome if the new great extinction can be halted or sloth i dream of that glass face at times will you tell me what this means yesterday at dusk a cold front came battering against my door were sweeping from the west striking bare branches against windows stirring the dark as he watched the

fire burn low a sri i rushed in terror to the window to children chase each other in circles laughing that was israel wasserstein of washburn university with william stafford report too crazy horse followed by his own report to william stafford jeff tittel are of lawrence was also inspired to write his own reporter william stafford it's followed by two of william stafford poems listening and at fort kent maine in liberal kansas nineteen thirty two reporter william stafford kansas city the poets were all defeated they still rose still follow the golden thread as you said but only for themselves which is all just an artsy way of saying we're now the only state in america without an arts council and man it's embarrassing

if you are still around maybe you'd go find the governor and read him something for kindness and one that might change his mind and his life you're our has had and will have better days i bought your book that a borders i'm sorry to say it had been there awhile i could tell though you enjoy not have minded the dust i found it on the back shelf other books had gathered around as if to listen to listen my father could hear a little animal style or in moscow in the dark against the screen and every far sound called the listening out into

places where the rest of us have never been morris spoke to him from the soft while tonight then came to our porch for us on the wind we would watch him look up and just face goatee and the walls of the world flared widened my father heard so much that we still stand inflating the quiet by turning the face waiting for a time when something in the night will touch us to from that other place at ford and maine and liberal kansas nineteen thirty two and instant sprang at me a winter instead it's been great panel of evening slanted shadows gleaned from a line of trees where raymond had slipped the sidewalk no one was there it was only a quick flash of the

scene and plans without connection to anything that meant more than itself but i carried it and were like a gift from a child who knows that is what is important to remember the holding of breath and surprise the friends around and god holding it up to even a rock or a slice of the evening and behind it the whole world jeff taylor is a writer living in lawrence rhonda miller is also from lawrence she reads william stafford's poem traveling through the dark traveling through the dark i found a dear dead on the edge of the wilson river road is usually best to roll them into the canyon that road is narrow to swerve might make more dead i quote detail like i stumbled back of the car and stood by the heat ito a recent killing shiites didn't already almost cold i dragged her off she was large in the belly

my fingers touching her side probably the reason her side was warm her fondly they're waiting alive still never to be born the side that mountain road i hesitated the car and heads lower part of the rights under the kurdistan the engine i stood in the glare of the warm exhausted turning red around our group i could hear the wilderness listened i thought hard for all this my only swerving and pushed over the edge into the river by responsible was an instinct a memory that i had growing up on my grandparents' farm in northwest kansas shine county about a mile west of every three breaks barbara's crisis at an indication of something worth investigating was within it took all my strength to slight open close again new bertrand rented urgency let me to the stillborn kept it warm

i nestled in the haiti cited face my arms around its neck i knew what death was headless and whispers about my mother's not long before i could hear the mother cows love calling from outside the background or i thought the spirit from the caf swirl around me disappear a group called i felt emptier i said and the villagers don't tell my sister came to my hand ran with me past my grandmother's garden of hauling rocks iris strawberries rhubarb pass the spot where the revelers the water from a sprinkler one on the state passed a ride home where we need a buyer and swarmed in polls before they tumbled to the ground we open the rest of screen door to tell to bed where i lay crying because it felt so wondrous because it felt so good intelligence gain no longer spread across the floor that's randa miller of lawrence reading at washburn university on

march thirty first two thousand fourteen i'm kay macintyre today and katie are preset we're hearing excerpts from one hundred years of poetry and piece celebrating the work and inspiration of kansas poet william stafford this event was organized by washburn university english department and writer in residence time before all of this was a letter that is a prose poem written to wilfred owen they call in nigeria and stafford was a toddler in the kind of war that wings tavern with the war and didn't work offered owens final garden and this is from wilfred owen certainly flowers have the easiest time on earth friends be very sure i shall be better off with plans that share or peaceably the matter and the chateau soft rains what touched me

as they could touch points and nothing but the sun shall make me wear chelsea's his gardening aug two thousand seven dear wilfred owens how i wish you might describe to me the evening you spent at the chelsea physically before you are shipped off next day to death in a war where they dug trenches furman not for us for seed were you most aware of the walls which only those living along royal hospital road could enter bringing you along when the heavy door swung open or you're being led into the privacy or enclosure hw as a lie as it is today you know beneath clouds ready for it was the august evening wore calling flowers forth to bloom and then rubs

some in the single day in a garden that houses every plant known to help and hard of humankind did you walk among boston's or sit in repose your dinner was subsumed settling perhaps you studied the ways it's solomon's ceo hemlock locke star where else but at chelsea physically or curse and two hours so actually made of the same letters and rescue your poetry letters and words strung with a skill you already had your life secure those so soon to be taken or was your life get on like a war a flower a single moment when well did you look back even briefly as you left by the city door along swans walk what red metal fell across your

i wanted to name i am sincerely i was using just the physics in somerset that one that one of the volunteers sit or humans as i was on sabbatical from an academic positions usually must be a scientist or no getting inspiration for stories and paul hill nothing's ever ever happened here and then as you tell me later and said oh by the way wilfred owen spent his last night in england and the shows that this is a poem as as i in one of my favorite poem by william stafford verse it was all the songs at once become precious and was the bar and when you know my hands

the cracks are being made in the axe handle oh let me stay here humbling forgotten to rejoice in all let the sun casually rise and said if i have not found the right place teach me for somewhere inside the cards are faulted mentions lines to the bomb saying for the saints for ever the shed and window rare so glorious sun shelters like the gong now i know why people worship carry around a magic emblems wake up talking dreams they teach to their children the world speaks the world speaks everything to us is our only friend come april is writer in residence at washburn university which hosted this event celebrating the life and work of kansas poet william stafford our

next to readers are the only father son poetry team at the stafford event bills elden teaches creative writing at hutchinson community college tyler sheldon is a student at the emporia state university says the story overheard in the record there's a long back their mother is gone they tell us if you hold onto the dogs will take you home and they tell us never to cry will die today they say if we're ever afraid it all night we pulled along the stars go down we're never afraid and then this is one minor you're in the river a statement from an interview that steven hiner didn't william stafford and cottonwood years ago is talking about that home traveling

through the dark and an answer to many votes would look like a lot of us would like that dear opened up not far removed in a conflict and he said their windows that open and close like steel traps and opponents here in the river it's a hard gentleness try living that way minute by minute or even by day we live in their minds like dreaming fields we will never walk without you well outside the current waits sometimes we wake in the door and no the churning that would free us from doubts at the voice and it's foray into swamps always an interesting act to follow this first one is called touches late you can hear the

stars and beyond them some kind of quiet other than silence adidas the miles make the way candidates hold their miles back you were in the earth and it guides you out rather sometimes it is the precious world the restaurants too quiet for these days old ones that belong in the earlier mountains you put a hand out in the dark of a cave in the walls and wait for your fingers cold that stone tells you all of the years that passed without knowing you think of caves held in the earth no mouth no light down there the years have lost their way under your hand it all studies is the world for your hand and then one of mine that was influenced by stanford called discovering the title kind of wanted to play down into the pot discovering the way a hummingbird alters its dizzying

flight five year degrees to flip flop back and away from danger giving id exclusive rights at least among birds to undo itself how cicadas are the most docile teams in the world really spending seventeen years asleep never asking to borrow the car or to stay out late until one day they wake up and break the rules droning into sky with the rest of us and the precise bracket of geese that we miss itself across clouds each evening changing lead with nearly every beat a great self winding watch kicking and shifting its way through a welcoming band of star food rosen is one of my favorites

which is like a number of others including one i think which is about a list just a list of thoughts it's related but separate and maple syrup a sense of humor and also his healthy skepticism was the research team in the mountains we have found a certain having kind of wants and doesn't want answers are just echoes they say but the question troubles before it comes back in that town us did you know that if your everything is free we found days that that would no our prize on anything dirty river illegally never come together the result if your house or used to be friends in the mountains or our calls the only real friends can vote many go home having conquered a mountain they leave their names of the top of

the jar for snow to remember looking out over the campfire ignites again this year i pick a storm for you again the first one we kind of last year and hurricane and she chose opinions five in every county and the romeos above storms of style and the several years ago i was fooling around with words not having a subject i just have a ride on some random things in occurred to me very quickly but what i was trying to do was right and try this without tiger woods triple all those together and i called experimental most of the kansas river so this is a promise to do lists even permits have goals and aspirations so things to walk through ramadan and it's got about lost to see one wildfire burning in a red line flying kites constructed of reid's news brands or waited

by stones built a fortress france tear down the snow fence save the post well sometimes but always returned before dusk you have full of berries into wild onions and wash your breath with a tin cup of rain the nigerian citizens of her attempts to snuff out and going to sleep all allegiance to things you can touch dirt and woods to replace god's country women's center for that oil down the swollen creeks with a note in science the reason the most frequent things i learned last week and that's

when they meet each other usually pass on the right sometimes even open a city door with your elbow a man in boston has dedicated himself to telling about injustice for three thousand dollars you will come to your town to tell you about what schopenhauer was a pessimist but he played the flute yates pound and eliot sart as growing from other art the study that if i ever die i'd like to be in the evening that way i'll have all that article with me and no one will see how it can topple along in the pentagon one person's job is to take hands out of towns hills and fields and then say depends for later we just

heard a couple of list poems that one read by c malcolm ellsworth of topeka before that time reynolds pay a lot we've got time for just a few more of the participants in western universities recent celebration of william stafford and his poetry up next kal baron of elmo breeds william stafford stolen when i met my muse that followed by phil wedge of lawrence that graham barnes of topeka i glanced at her into my glasses off they were still singing they bust like the logos on the coffee table and then seized her voice so forth and then send my dad didn't i think the sealing arch and do that nails at their took and you grip on what ever they touched it in your own way of looking at things she said would you allow me to live with you every

glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation and i took her hand to states sometimes when you watch the fire gas is low gray away the son turned cold and spiers in winter in the town back home so far away sometimes on the telephone the one you hear goes far and ghostly voice is whispering you think they are from other wires you think they are and i also liked how the tone is sort of playing with the internal rhyme and that's what that's what i like about around your house as well so it seems to me they go together around your house i get you to read this long haul all the way down to the street light

yellow under midnight i get in the sound you can hear wind drops are talking to themselves or you're staring through a window i give you a letter you come forward again and carry it when you walk back to the fire where you stand for a while i give you the voter first time what time's one page of the time last flames of the draft announcement of the night and i did we lost a child is when my daughter died suddenly the first thing i heard after hearing of that was nice and then i learned later yet that in some native american cultures geese are

seen as the messengers and this poem that has struck the pentagon and at a canadian here that while he's know how their eyes keir feet folded into the gown open your eyes like that see day dawn at a certain high hurt called dreaming like little stones high over the lakes the lakes in their heads paths leading the earth finding the right whale place we can be there and have embraced what comes into russia now while human use

these readings were recorded at washburn university and march thirty first two thousand fourteen during a celebration of the poetry of william stafford who would have turned one hundred years old this year thanks to thom avril and the many poets who participated we close today's program with one last poem read by william stafford himself you will never be alone you hear is the deepest yellow hose across the heroes and throngs are the silence after lightning before it says its name and then the clouds wide mouthed apologies 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 the years you turn your head that's what the silence meant your novel the

whole wide world tours thanks again to the watts of library special collections and archives that lewis and clark college in portland oregon for permission to use these recordings and came back entire k pr present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas