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Author: Andy Traisman

Title: William Stafford and Gary Snyder

William Stafford self-portrait.

Poetry is an unending conversation, whispers in the eddies, wind roaring through the pines, connectivetissue between generations; collegiality, correspondence, conscience, responsibility. Teaching.

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William Stafford, from the William Stafford Archives.

Writing is peculiarly susceptible to this wonderful resource, language. I didnt invent it. I dont controlit. It just rolls on. It comes from everybody. Its not something I learned from other writers, by anymeans. Its not something I learned from other critics by any means. It is a great river of possibilitiesswirling around us all the time. People talk to each other and come uponI guess I do it like a gull

these great swoops of realization and vistas that veer off toward other formulations in language. And eventhe syllables have meaning William Stafford as told to Bill Moyers, October 1988.

Can Poetry save the earth?Listen to Stanford professor, John Felstiner answer this question on NPR:Listen Now

The goal is not to see what a poet is, but to find what poetry can do in the world

-Gary Snyder

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102795472http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102795472http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102795472http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102795472

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Gary Snyder by William Stafford.

Earth Verse

Gary Snyder

Wide enough to keep you looking

Open enough to keep you moving

Dry enough to keep you honest

Prickly enough to make you tough

Green enough to go on living

Old enough to give you dreams

Copyright 1996 by Gary Snyder from Mountains and Rivers Without End. Used by permission of

Counterpoint.

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Courtesy of the William Stafford Archives.

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Gary Snyder to William Stafford:

29.III. 1967

Dear Bill S.

I just got back to Japan, read your letter, and the words just came tumbling out. So here it is.I was indeed sorry to miss you in Portland---but I felt your presence widely all thesame

they said you was in Missoula.

See you again in a year or two I expect.Gary Snyder-Kyoto, Japan

Gary Snyder and Donald Hall at the NCTE Conference, 1966. Photograph by William Stafford.

Teaching Poetry (Enclosed by Gary Snyder to William Stafford in letter of 29. III.1967)

To begin with, the teacher must like poetryand feel its relevance to life and the world. Most EnglishTeachers dont really like literatureand students, sensing this turn off.

Poems are the magic songs of the tribeabout love, work, prophecy, healing, and death. The creation of

poems for the tribe goes on: and the poems of ones own time we study mostly to know how they did itthen and where their heads were at; but they dont teach is much more than that...

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To teach poetry as it should be taught youd have to start with Paleolithic hunting magic and the masked

animal dancers. But shortcutting that, young people (or just people who are alive?) are interested in twothings: sex, and states of consciousness. Love, and magic. This is what poetry is about.

In actual fact poetry is very much in the front of the spiritual and social revolution taking place in the

United States. Youngsters are aware of this but their teachers arent. Teachers of English Literature should find out what their students are listening toBob Dylan, The Jefferson Airplane, Ed Sanders,Tolkienand then begin to teach.

Gary Snyder-Kyoto March 29, 1967

William Stafford at a poetry workshop, Port Townsend Washington, 1970s.

26.VIII.1967

Dear Wm. Stafford

The poems in VOL VIIIPoetry Northwest are a delight. I want you to know I appreciate them i.e. what

subtlety, irony, wit, perception in poetry should really be.married Miss Masa Hehaa on Aug 6 on Suwa-no-se island. Hope to see you in Portland in not too many years,

Gary Snyder

Honoring our Rivers: A Student Anthology

http://www.honoringourriver.org/http://www.honoringourriver.org/http://www.honoringourriver.org/

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For The Children

Gary Snyder

The rising hills, the slopes,of statistics

lie before us.the steep climb

of everything, going up,up, as we allgo down.

In the next century

or the one beyond that,they say,are valleys, pastures,we can meet there in peaceif we make it.

To climb these coming crests

one word to you, toyou and your children:

stay togetherlearn the flowers

go light

Copyright 1996 by Gary Snyder from Mountains and Rivers Without End. Used by permission of

Counterpoint.

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William Stafford on the Metolius River by Mike Markee.

Ask Me

William Stafford

Some time when the river is ice ask memistakes I have made. Ask me whetherwhat I have done is my life. Othershave come in their slow way intomy thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt: ask me what differencetheir strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.You and I can turn and lookat the silent river and wait.We know

the current is there, hidden; and thereare comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.What the river says, that is what I say.

Ask Me copyright 1977, 1998 by the Estate of William Stafford. Reprinted from The Way It Is: New &Selected Poems with permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota

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The Deschutes River by William Stafford.