Ask Me: 100 Essential Poems of William Stafford

by William Stafford, Kim Stafford (Editor)

Overview

"In our time there has been no poet who revived human hearts and spirits more convincingly than William Stafford." —Naomi Shihab Nye

Some time when the river is ice ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life.

—from "Ask Me"

In celebration of the poet's centennial, Ask Me collects one hundred of William Stafford's essential poems. As a conscientious objector during World War II, while assigned to Civilian Public Service camps Stafford began his daily writing practice, a lifelong early-morning ritual of witness. His poetry reveals the consequences of violence, the daily necessity of moral decisions, and the bounty of art. Selected and with a note by Kim Stafford, Ask Me presents the best from a profound and original American voice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781555976644
Publisher:	Graywolf Press
Publication date:	01/07/2014
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

William Stafford (1914–1993) was the author of more than fifty books, including Traveling Through the Dark, winner of the National Book Award. He served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and was Oregon's poet laureate.

Read an Excerpt

Ask Me

100 Essential Poems

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By William Stafford, Kim Stafford

Graywolf Press

Copyright © 2014 the Estate of William Stafford
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-55597-664-4

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CHAPTER 1

    A Story That Could Be True

    If you were exchanged in the cradle and
    your real mother died
    without ever telling the story
    then no one knows your name,
    and somewhere in the world
    your father is lost and needs you
    but you are far away.

    He can never find
    how true you are, how ready.
    When the great wind comes
    and the robberies of the rain
    you stand on the corner shivering.
    The people who go by —
    you wonder at their calm.

    They miss the whisper that runs
    any day in your mind,
    "Who are you really, wanderer?" —
    and the answer you have to give
    no matter how dark and cold
    the world around you is:
    "Maybe I'm a king."


    Fifteen

    South of the bridge on Seventeenth
    I found back of the willows one summer
    day a motorcycle with engine running
    as it lay on its side, ticking over
    slowly in the high grass. I was fifteen.

    I admired all that pulsing gleam, the
    shiny flanks, the demure headlights
    fringed where it lay; I led it gently
    to the road and stood with that
    companion, ready and friendly. I was fifteen.

    We could find the end of a road, meet
    the sky on out Seventeenth. I thought about
    hills, and patting the handle got back a
    confident opinion. On the bridge we indulged
    a forward feeling, a tremble. I was fifteen.

    Thinking, back farther in the grass I found
    the owner, just coming to, where he had flipped
    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 stood there, fifteen.


    Vocation

    This dream the world is having about itself
    includes a trace on the plains of the Oregon trail,
    a groove in the grass my father showed us all
    one day while meadowlarks were trying to tell
    something better about to happen.

    I dreamed the trace to the mountains, over the hills,
    and there a girl who belonged wherever she was.
    But then my mother called us back to the car:
    she was afraid; she always blamed the place,
    the time, anything my father planned.

    Now both of my parents, the long line through the plain,
    the meadowlarks, the sky, the world's whole dream
    remain, and I hear him say while I stand between the two,
    helpless, both of them part of me:
    "Your job is to find what the world is trying to be."


    Ask Me

    Some time when the river is ice ask me
    mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
    what I have done is my life. Others
    have come in their slow way into
    my thought, and some have tried to help
    or to hurt: ask me what difference
    their strongest love or hate has made.

    I will listen to what you say.
    You and I can turn and look
    at the silent river and wait. We know
    the current is there, hidden; and there
    are comings and goings from miles away
    that hold the stillness exactly before us.
    What the river says, that is what I say.


    The Way It Is

    There's a thread you follow. It goes among
    things that change. But it doesn't change.
    People wonder about what you are pursuing.
    You have to explain about the thread.
    But it is hard for others to see.
    While you hold it you can't get lost.
    Tragedies happen; people get hurt
    or die; and you suffer and get old.
    Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
    You don't ever let go of the thread.


    A Message from the Wanderer

    Today outside your prison I stand
    and rattle my walking stick: Prisoners, listen;
    you have relatives outside. And there are
    thousands of ways to escape.

    Years ago I bent my skill to keep my
    cell locked, had chains smuggled to me in pies,
    and shouted my plans to jailers;
    but always new plans occurred to me,
    or the new heavy locks bent hinges off,
    or some stupid jailer would forget
    and leave the keys.

    Inside, I dreamed of constellations —
    those feeding creatures outlined by stars,
    their skeletons a darkness between jewels,
    heroes that exist only where they are not.

    Thus freedom always came nibbling my thought,
    just as — often, in light, on the open hills —     you can pass an antelope and not know
    and look back, and then — even before you see —
    there is something wrong about the grass.
    And then you see.

    That's the way everything in the world is waiting.

    Now — these few more words, and then I'm
    gone: Tell everyone just to remember
    their names, and remind others, later, when we

    find each other. Tell the little ones
    to cry and then go to sleep, curled up
    where they can. And if any of us get lost,
    if any of us cannot come all the way —
    remember: there will come a time when
    all we have said and all we have hoped
    will be all right.

    There will be that form in the grass.


    Traveling through the Dark

    Traveling through the dark I found a deer
    dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
    It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
    that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

    By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
    and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
    she had stiffened already, almost cold.
    I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

    My fingers touching her side brought me the reason —
    her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
    alive, still, never to be born.
    Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

    The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
    under the hood purred the steady engine.
    I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
    around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

    I thought hard for us all — my only swerving —,
    then pushed her over the edge into the river.


    Mein Kampf

    In those reaches of the night when your thoughts
    burrow in, or at some stabbed interval
    pinned by a recollection in daylight,
    a better self begs its hands out to you:

    That bitter tracery your life wove
    looms forth, and the jagged times haggle
    and excruciate your reaching palms again —
    "A dull knife hurts most."

    Old mistakes come calling: no life
    happens just once. Whatever snags
    even the edge of your days will abide.
    You are a turtle with all the years on your back.

    Your head sinks down into the mud.
    You must bear it. You need a thick shell in that rain.


    You Reading This, Be Ready

    Starting here, what do you want to remember?
    How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
    What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
    sound from outside fills the air?

    Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
    than the breathing respect that you carry
    wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
    for time to show you some better thoughts?

    When you turn around, starting here, lift this
    new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
    all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
    reading or hearing this, keep it for life —

    What can anyone give you greater than now,
    starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?


    Security

    Tomorrow will have an island. Before night
    I always find it. Then on to the next island.
    These places hidden in the day separate
    and come forward if you beckon.
    But you have to know they are there before they exist.

    Some time there will be a tomorrow without any island.
    So far, I haven't let that happen, but after
    I'm gone others may become faithless and careless.
    Before them will tumble the wide unbroken sea,
    and without any hope they will stare at the horizon.

    So to you, Friend, I confide my secret:
    to be a discoverer you hold close whatever
    you find, and after a while you decide
    what it is. Then, secure in where you have been,
    you turn to the open sea and let go.


    Thinking for Berky

    In the late night listening from bed
    I have joined the ambulance or the patrol
    screaming toward some drama, the kind of end
    that Berky must have some day, if she isn't dead.

    The wildest of all, her father and mother cruel,
    farming out there beyond the old stone quarry
    where highschool lovers parked their lurching cars,
    Berky learned to love in that dark school.

    Early her face was turned away from home
    toward any hardworking place; but still her soul,
    with terrible things to do, was alive, looking out
    for the rescue that — surely, some day — would have to come.

    Windiest nights, Berky, I have thought for you,
    and no matter how lucky I've been I've touched wood.
    There are things not solved in our town though tomorrow came:
    there are things time passing can never make come true.

    We live in an occupied country, misunderstood;
    justice will take us millions of intricate moves.
    Sirens will hunt down Berky, you survivors in your beds
    listening through the night, so far and good.


    Why I Am Happy

    Now has come, an easy time. I let it
    roll. There is a lake somewhere
    so blue and far nobody owns it.
    A wind comes by and a willow listens
    gracefully.

    I hear all this, every summer. I laugh
    and cry for every turn of the world,
    its terribly cold, innocent spin.
    That lake stays blue and free; it goes
    on and on.

    And I know where it is.


    A Ritual to Read to Each Other

    If you don't know the kind of person I am
    and I don't know the kind of person you are
    a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
    and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

    For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
    a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
    sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
    storming out to play through the broken dyke.

    And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
    but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
    I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
    to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

    And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
    a remote important region in all who talk:
    though we could fool each other, we should consider —
    lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

    For it is important that awake people be awake,
    or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
    the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
    should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.


    Serving with Gideon

    Now I remember: in our town the druggist
    prescribed Coca-Cola mostly, in tapered
    glasses to us, and to the elevator
    man in a paper cup, so he could
    drink it elsewhere because he was black.

    And now I remember The Legion — gambling
    in the back room, and no women but girls, old boys
    who ran the town. They were generous,
    to their sons or the sons of friends.
    And of course I was almost one.

    I remember winter light closing
    its great blue fist slowly eastward
    along the street, and the dark then, deep
    as war, arched over a radio show
    called the thirties in the great old U.S.A.

    Look down, stars — I was almost
    one of the boys. My mother was folding
    her handkerchief; the library seethed and sparked;
    right and wrong arced; and carefully
    I walked with my cup toward the elevator man.


    Easter Morning

    Maybe someone comes to the door and says,
    "Repent," and you say, "Come on in," and it's
    Jesus. That's when all you ever did, or said,
    or even thought, suddenly wakes up again and
    sings out, "I'm still here," and you know it's true.
    You just shiver alive and are left standing
    there suddenly brought to account: saved.

    Except, maybe that someone says, "I've got a deal
    for you." And you listen, because that's how
    you're trained — they told you, "Always hear both sides."
    So then the slick voice can sell you anything, even
    Hell, which is what you're getting by listening.
    Well, what should you do? I'd say always go to
    the door, yes, but keep the screen locked. Then,
    while you hold the Bible in one hand, lean forward
    and say carefully, "Jesus?"


    Assurance

    You will never be alone, you hear so deep
    a sound when autumn comes. Yellow
    pulls across the hills and thrums,
    or the silence after lightning before it says
    its names — and then the clouds' wide-mouthed
    apologies. You were aimed from birth:
    you will never be alone. Rain
    will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,
    long aisles — you never heard so deep a sound,
    moss on rock, and years. You turn your head —
    that's what the silence meant: you're not alone.
    The whole wide world pours down.


    Our Story

    Remind me again — together we
    trace our strange journey, find
    each other, come on laughing.
    Some time we'll cross where life
    ends. We'll both look back
    as far as forever, that first day.
    I'll touch you — a new world then.
    Stars will move a different way.
    We'll both end. We'll both begin.

    Remind me again.


    The Little Ways That Encourage Good Fortune

    Wisdom is having things right in your life
    and knowing why.
    If you do not have things right in your life
    you will be overwhelmed:
    you may be heroic, but you will not be wise.
    If you have things right in your life
    but do not know why,
    you are just lucky, and you will not move
    in the little ways that encourage good fortune.

    The saddest are those not right in their lives
    who are acting to make things right for others:
    they act only from the self —
    and that self will never be right:
    no luck, no help, no wisdom.


    A Gesture toward an Unfound Renaissance

    There was the slow girl in art class,
    less able to say where our lessons led: 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 find a better art inside the lesson.

    And then, late at night, when the whole town
    was alone, the current below the rumbly bridge
    at Main Street would go an extra swirl
    and gurgle, once, by the pilings;
    and at my desk at home, or when our house
    opened above my bed toward the stars,
    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
    look back through the door that always closes.


    Saint Matthew and All

    Lorene — we thought she'd come home. But
    it got late, and then days. Now
    it has been years. Why shouldn't she,
    if she wanted? I would: something comes
    along, a sunny day, you start walking;
    you meet a person who says, "Follow me,"
    and things lead on.

    Usually, it wouldn't happen, but sometimes
    the neighbors notice your car is gone, the
    patch of oil in the driveway, and it fades.
    They forget.

    In the Bible it happened — fishermen, Levites.
    They just went away and kept going. Thomas,
    away off in India, never came back.

    But Lorene — it was a stranger maybe, and he
    said, "Your life, I need it." And nobody else did.


    A Dedication

    We stood by the library. It was an August night.
    Priests and sisters of hundreds of unsaid creeds
    passed us going their separate pondered roads.
    We watched them cross under the corner light.

    Freights on the edge of town were carrying away
    flatcars of steel to be made into secret guns;
    we knew, being human, that they were enemy guns,
    and we were somehow vowed to poverty.

    No one stopped or looked long or held out a hand.
    They were following orders received from hour to hour,
    so many signals, all strange, from a foreign power:
    But tomorrow, you whispered, peace may flow over the land.

    At that corner in a flash of lightning we two stood;
    that glimpse we had will stare through the dark forever:
    on the poorest roads we would be walkers and beggars,
    toward some deathless meeting involving a crust of bread.


    Learning

    A piccolo played, then a drum.
    Feet began to come — a part
    of the music. Here came a horse,
    clippety clop, away.

    My mother said, "Don't run —
    the army is after someone
    other than us. If you stay
    you'll learn our enemy."

    Then he came, the speaker. He stood
    in the square. He told us who
    to hate. I watched my mother's face,
    its quiet. "That's him," she said.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Ask Me by William Stafford, Kim Stafford. Copyright © 2014 the Estate of William Stafford. Excerpted by permission of Graywolf Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Preface by Kim Stafford,
A Story That Could Be True,
Fifteen,
Vocation,
Ask Me,
The Way It Is,
A Message from the Wanderer,
Traveling through the Dark,
Mein Kampf,
You Reading This, Be Ready,
Security,
Thinking for Berky,
Why I Am Happy,
A Ritual to Read to Each Other,
Serving with Gideon,
Easter Morning,
Assurance,
Our Story,
The Little Ways That Encourage Good Fortune,
A Gesture toward an Unfound Renaissance,
Saint Matthew and All,
A Dedication,
Learning,
Objector,
At the Un-National Monument along the Canadian Border,
For the Unknown Enemy,
At the Bomb Testing Site,
These Mornings,
Distractions,
Watching the Jet Planes Dive,
Poetry,
The Star in the Hills,
Peace Walk,
Explaining the Big One,
Entering History,
"Shall we have that singing ...",
In the Night Desert,
The Concealment: Ishi, the Last Wild Indian,
Bess,
American Gothic,
Report to Crazy Horse,
For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid,
Listening,
Clash,
Our Kind,
Aunt Mabel,
At the Grave of My Brother: Bomber Pilot,
A Catechism,
Circle of Breath,
A Memorial: Son Bret,
A Family Turn,
Ruby Was Her Name,
With Kit, Age 7, at the Beach,
Passing Remark,
Once in the 40s,
One Home,
Prairie Town,
Ceremony,
The Farm on the Great Plains,
One Evening,
In the Oregon Country,
At the Klamath Berry Festival,
Looking for Gold,
An Oregon Message,
Earth Dweller,
Spirit of Place: Great Blue Heron,
The Fish Counter at Bonneville,
Witness,
Bi-Focal,
Across Kansas,
Malheur before Dawn,
Starting with Little Things,
Mr. Conscience,
The Well Rising,
Climbing along the River,
Roll Call,
Things I Learned Last Week,
Ode to Garlic,
Reading with Little Sister: A Recollection,
Just Thinking,
Any Morning,
First Grade,
Freedom,
When I Met My Muse,
You and Art,
The Animal That Drank Up Sound,
Keeping a Journal,
Indian Caves in the Dry Country,
Burning a Book,
Growing Up,
A Farewell, Age Ten,
Artist, Come Home,
An Archival Print,
Why I Am a Poet,
Run before Dawn,
The Last Class,
Looking across the River,
Father and Son,
Choosing a Dog,
"Are you Mr. William Stafford?",
Smoke,

Editorial Reviews

I was so surprised at the depth of William Stafford's poetry, and it fell into my heart as if it had always been there.” —Alice Walker

“Ask Me: 100 Essential Poems is a wonderful one-volume introduction to Stafford's poetry.” —Oregonian

“[Ask Me] does what Stafford's poetry itself does—it performs a small, creaturely act of reaching out. . . . Honoring a beauty that escapes national boundaries, and throwing his lot in with the outcasts, Stafford celebrates otherwise neglected yet crucial areas of our personal and public experience. If poetry itself seems at times to be 'hallowed by neglect,' a book such as Ask Me goes a long way toward proving that perception wrong.” —Star Tribune

“Stafford was a phenomenon. . . . In this selection of one hundred poems published to celebrate his centenary, Stafford emerges as an allegorist, a messenger. . . . These poised poems are revealing without being explicit, as in the final line of the justly famous title poem, 'What the river says, that is what I say.'” —Booklist

“Ask Me suggests that Stafford's life is larger than the sum of its actions—larger enough that it keeps speaking, years after it is over. . . . As Ask Me demonstrates, Stafford's modes are manifold. One moment gentle and receptive, the next critical and morally imperative, his poetry is as textured and unpredictable as the natural world it so often extols. . . . Stafford nearly always speaks with candor and moral authority.” —ZYZZYVA

“For those unacquainted with William Stafford this is a great entryway to one of the twentieth century's giants of poetry. Stafford wrote a poem a day, and you should read one of these each day. He's a philosopher, father figure, steely yet jocular activist, a moody lover, a world citizen, a word citizen. Genius and rapture abound in these pages." —Anthony Swofford "Too often William Stafford is forced into the sappy clothing of a gentleman farmer or weekend nature lover; too often his work is spoken about as if one was speaking about the most gentle poems on earth. For me, Stafford was his own rebellion. This is NOT a nature poet but a poet who lived with nature, who loved it even though it could kill, who was calm even though it was wild, a poet unafraid of the dark in the forest probably because it looked a lot like the dark in him.” —Matthew Dickman

“These are verses gathered from the mountain of Stafford, poems that resound from one generation to another; they are poems of welcome and invitation, poems that expand our field of vision; they are wisdom poems, hard-earned poems, poems in conversation with loss and memory at a personal and global level. . . . As a deeply committed teacher and poet of witness, [Stafford] was a profound and life-long voice for peace, a voice fully aware of a painful and beautiful world, a voice that never faltered in its recognition of a livable and harmonious way of being.” —Brian Turner

From the Publisher