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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 18, 2018)
OCTOBER 18, 2018 // 13 Continued from Page 2 Dining Out North Coast and Peninsula My golf game may be under par, but the Breakfast specials here are not! 503.755.1818 www.camp18restaurant.com Favorite stop to & from the Coast Seaside 451 Ave U Seaside Golf 503-738-5261 Course seasidegolfcourse@gmail.com S TU E 22 $ Hungry Harbor GrillE 3 13 Pa c ific Hw y, Do w n to w n Lo n g Be a c h, W A 3 60-642-5555 • w w w.hu n gryha rb o r.c o m –– COM E EN JOY OUR K ITE ROOM –– 503.325.7414 bakedak.com #1 12th Street, Astoria, OR OPENIN FRI & SA G NIGHTS T l St, Astoria, OR 97103 • 503- Don’t get caught in the rain! Call in your order. 503-741-3433 Buy 1 Meal, Get 1 1/2 off (of equal or lesser value) Monday-Thursday SEAFOOD CHOWDER BURGERS Offer expires 10/31/18 303 1st Avenue South, Ilwaco, Washington 360-777-3740 • travsplace.net OPEN AT 6 AM 34 741- 33 15 97 C omm ercia Dr ive Wa -Thr lk- u an In d ECIAL! Y PI Z Z A DA Pizz 2 for as SP ILIES FAM OME! C WEL 3 8TH & L, ON THE S EAV IEW BEAC H APPROAC H 3 60-642-7880 BURG ER NITE W ED’S RETURN OC T 17TH Now Open! 632 W. Marine Drive, Astoria SMOKEHOUSE BUTCHER BLOCK MEAT , SMOKED MEAT , GHOSTS , LIKE US ON FACEBOOK FOR WEEKLY SPECIALS and more ! 125 9TH ST. ASTORIA OR. (503)325-4744 the books come forth, not the actual craft of making poems,” Kim said. Though William Stafford wrote many thousands of poems, Kim only ever saw his father writing once, “when Portland’s mayor Bud Clark asked him for a poem on the Great Blue Heron,” he said. “When he got the call, we were in a motel in Washington, D.C., and my father sat down and wrote his poem, which I later read to the City Council,” Kim recalled. It was only after his father died, and Kim “inher- ited the care of his 22,000 pages of daily writing,” that he could “watch him work,” he said. Those pages now live at williamstaffordar- chives.org. Asked how his father’s poetry influenced his own, Stafford said it wasn’t so much his style that helped him, but “his commitment to the process of daily writing, and his consistent idea that poetry is not about success or fame, but about honesty and service to the human story. “A poem is a kind of coin that can be minted by one writer, but then travel to sustain exchange among many others down the line,” he continued. “As my father wrote at one point, ‘Let me be a plain, unmarked envelope passing through the world.’” ‘Where miracles happen’ Joseph Bernt, who pens a Cannon Beach Gazette column about happenings at the library, took a class from Kim’s father on Dan- te’s “Divine Comedy” at Lewis & Clark in the 1960s. Bernt said Kim Stafford, at heart, is “a Romantic poet in terms of looking to the past for explanations and commentary about the present,” he said. He also enjoys Kim’s use PHOTOS COURTESY KIM STAFFORD Oregon Poet Laureate Kim Stafford at Eagle Creek. ‘THE VOTE IS VERY IMPORTANT IN A DEMOCRACY, BUT IT IS FINITE, NUMERICAL. BUT THE VOICE IS INFINITELY EXPANSIVE, AS EACH OF US BECOMES MORE SKILLED AND READY TO TELL OUR VISIONS, OUR STRUGGLES, OUR HOPES, OUR PROPOSALS FOR ADVANCING THE HUMAN PROJECT ON EARTH.’ of “the language of ordi- nary, hardworking, common people in his writing,” he said. “He hides his craft, his art, quite well. He speaks directly to his readers as he channels his subjects.” Stafford said a friend recently pointed out: “we have two things in this life: a vote and a voice.” “The vote is very import- ant in a democracy, but it is finite, numerical. But the voice is infinitely expan- sive, as each of us becomes more skilled and ready to tell our visions, (our) struggles, our hopes, our proposals for advancing the human project on earth,” Stafford said. “I want to support that community of expansive voices.” His father once wrote: “I must be willingly fallible in order to deserve my place in the realm where miracles happen.” “That is,” Kim ex- plained, “one must begin by surrendering to the process of writing, in order to be ready to find what only that process can bring forward.” CW