OCTOBER 18, 2018 // 13
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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