Oregon Reads 2014 - William Stafford Centennial

Summer Focus on: War and Peace

This July we remember the start of World War I one hundred years ago. It is well worth noting that the "war to end all wars" as it was known, did not in fact end war, but ushered one of the more bloody eras in human history. William Stafford  was well known for his principled opposition to war. Stafford utilized both prose and poetry to discuss his anti-war ideas. From 1942 to 1946, William Stafford was interned in camps for conscientious objectors after refusing to be inducted into the U.S. Army.  As a pacifist, he worked on conservation projects for Civilian Public Service, an alternative program for young men who refused to participate in World War II.   

February Focus on: Oregon, Stafford's chosen home

After World War II, Stafford took a position as a teacher at Chaffey High School in greater Los Angeles. In 1947, he was recruited by Lewis & Clark College president Morgan Odell, himself a conscientious objector in World War I. Stafford remained at the college until his retirement in 1979, with brief absences to teach at San Jose State University, and the University of Iowa and to make frequent reading and workshop tours. He was in demand for the remainder of his life for poetry readings and writing workshops, activities in which he had been a pioneer.

In 1970 he was named to a one-year position as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, the office later known as poet laureate. Four years later, Governor Tom McCall appointed him Oregon’s fourth poet laureate, a position he held until August 1989. He lived in Lake Oswego until his death in 1998.  
_{[excerpted from The Oregon Encyclopedia]}

An Oregon Message

by William Stafford

When we first moved here, pulled   
the trees in around us, curled   
our backs to the wind, no one   
had ever hit the moon—no one.
Now our trees are safer than the stars,   
and only other people's neglect   
is our precious and abiding shell,
pierced by meteors, radar, and the telephone.
From our snug place we shout
religiously for attention, in order to hide:   
only silence or evasion will bring
dangerous notice, the hovering hawk
of the state, or the sudden quiet stare   
and fatal estimate of an alerted neighbor.
This message we smuggle out in   
its plain cover, to be opened   
quietly: Friends everywhere—
we are alive! Those moon rockets   
have missed millions of secret   
places! Best wishes.
Burn this.

_{William Stafford, “An Oregon Message” from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1998 by William Stafford. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.}

Listen

​To archival recordings of poet William Stafford, with an introduction to his life and work. Recorded 1970 and 1978, Library of Congress.