William Stafford: 100 Years of Poetry -- Part One [Encore]

today's keep your presents was originally broadcast on april twenty seven two thousand fourteen 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 this monument is for the unknown didn't our enemies like a picture their 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 where 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 and some of the teachers were kind some more frightening some other students didn't care about a listen to and waved it and at the end of the day always 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 wanted sixty pages he

paid forty five he was only fifteen years old i 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 i can't let the bucket of memory down into the well pull out of cool moments so sorry he's gone fifteen it's the mystified 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 than on seventeenth and her daughter 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 visiting 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 as quite close was it as time to notice it's intolerable snow innumerable intelligent

information of his time 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 an issue of weather report like when they grab her frustration i'll glow of a million forty degrees of lost boston the bounce mounting over iran's a voice the great sled dog show was running for his life all who hear in your water to rise and sought

caught in this cold the world all going great the frozen peas were jewish 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 whole day the town and they're both 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 he put a way to close the door and never opened while the forgotten poet aged mckeown mouse pete the stench of it everywhere terms like thoughts like periods displaced from here the fragmentary sentences pages shredded from as a verity is my poetry money pull out the entire drawer which you carried with two hands and set upon the table and my critics i see nobody

asked you ask and in return i discovered my poetry transformed the good news and find a few states 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 the 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 spawned a gesture toward in and found renaissance i'm kay 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 his home and stealing from home but also touches on his role as a conscientious objector and its relationship to home because of that so it's still you really want one 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 and trace the genesis for junior but i don't think it goes so here i am i have wandered the world but we'll always a lot of the stark frame house where the swing wrote angles and corn all the us have who wants to do a traverse on my father's morning edition beside the edge of 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 but meyer lives in wichita and from

manhattan 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 a great plane toilets an 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 some here i will bring the line on the night at last to write one and then i take word for braille from the phone on the wall either 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 there's no there's no farm myself will be the plane wives as 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 it was blinding 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 it is the world again pastor han press 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 and walking 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 as far ignored 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 in its day unfolds 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 native heart on the platform and filled with rain and the sound that followed the couplings back and report forward and hold the training that's the rescued year was cited by eric mchenry of washburn university 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 a few 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 he asks when words do they even changed and higher ed every person a teacher here says hurt or scorned people are places where real enemies high he says we should not hurt or scorn anyone but help them 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'm right 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 that's all of our promises are generic sayings to each other are honorable intentions those

five farm when i salute at these times is like saying my eyes and joining a religious calling me that 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 foods

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 growing

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 ie it 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 us base 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 shrieking 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 pallets 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 usually not have minded the dust i found it on the back shelf other books had gathered around as if to listen listen to my father could hear a little animal style or in martha 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 denied them came to our porch for us on the wind we would watch him look up and just face poking 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 rain 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 the river 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 tree i went 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 been 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 disliked open close again new burton hunted 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 adolescent of 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 that tumbled to the ground we open the rest of screen door to tell it to bed or identifying 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 and j mcintyre today and katie are present 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 roach could enter bringing you along with the heavy door swung open or you're being led into the privacy or enclosure what is the line 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 with sassoon 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 ask why this city door

along swans walk what red metal fell across your i wanted to name i am sincerely i was using just the physics and then on to a summer sabbatical in 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 verses it was all the costs at once become precious

and was the bar and when you know my hands the cracks are being made in the tax scandal 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 trains they teach to their children the world speaks the world speaks everything to us is our only friend tom avril 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 beneath us the sled whispers along back there are mothers can they tell us you hold on the dogs will take you home and they tell us never to cry will die today they say if we're ever afraid 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 you 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 in sweatpants 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 keys 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 answer is the largest echoes they say but the question troubles before it comes back and that helps did you know that here everything is free we found days that would no our price on anything when a dirty river in a clean river come together the result is dirty river 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 i 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 not 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 of reference in covering 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 follow dallas' will agree with a note in science the reason the most frequent things i learned last week

and is 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 and towns hills and fields and then say depends for life are

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 to 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 already 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 to when my daughter died suddenly the first thing i heard after hearing of that was nice and

then i learned 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 pass leading the earth finding the right well place we can't be there 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 seventy percent yellow hose across the heroes and throngs are the silence after lightning before it says its name and then the clouds and wide mouth the politics you're ancient birth you'll never be along rain will come a gutter failed and amazon along aisles you never so deep a sound last song rock years you

turn your head that's what the silence meant your novel the whole wide world pours down 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