Sunday, May 16, 2010

Thought for the Day

To be a discoverer you hold close whatever you find 
and after a while you decide what it is and then, 
secure in where you have been, you turn to the open sea and let go.
~ William Stafford

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Formerly Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, William Stafford (1914 - 1993) was 48 when he published Traveling Through the Dark, his first major collection of poetry, which,  in 1963, was awarded a National Book Award. Stafford went on to publish more than five dozen books of poetry and prose, including Stories That Could Be True: New and Collected Poems (1977), Kansas Poems of William Stafford (1990), Writing the Australian Crawl (Poets on Poetry, 1978), Learning to Live in the World: Earth Poems (1994), the Darkness Around Us Is Deep: Selected Poems (1994), and Even in Quiet Places (1996). 

A complete bibliography is here. A selection of Stafford's poems is here. Several videos featuring Stafford are available here

Go here for an interview with Stafford, published in Modern American Poetry.

5 comments:

Louise Gallagher said...

have a beautiful day holding close all you've found and setting yourself free on the open seas of adventure.

sarah said...

I love this quote. :-) Have a great day.

Anonymous said...

"'You don't have to
prove anything,' my mother said. 'Just be ready
for what God sends.

wm. stafford

Kathleen Overby said...

More than great quote for life. :)

A. Jay Adler said...

The sun, the earth, the sky, all wait.
The crowns and redbirds talk. The light
along the hills has come, has found you.

William Stafford