clipped from writersalmanac.publicradio.org

At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border

This is the field where the battle did not happen,
where the unknown soldier did not die.
This is the field where grass joined hands,
where no monument stands,

and the only heroic thing is the sky.

Birds fly here without any sound,
unfolding their wings across the open.
No people killed-or were killed-on this ground
hallowed by neglect and an air so tame
that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.

by William Stafford, from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems.

William Stafford's birthday rekindles love of poetry

By Jeff Baker, The Oregonian

January 25, 2010, 12:54PM

On Jan. 17 William Stafford would have been 96 years old. His son, Kim, celebrated by attending a Stafford birthday event and leading a writing workshop.

Kim Stafford started by using Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac" segment about his father as a prompt to get some creative juices flowing.

"Take 6 1/2 minutes to remember and ponder, maybe jot some things down," Stafford told a small, attentive group at the Writers' Dojo in North Portland. "I want to be as deliberately vague as possible. Just let it go."

William Stafford

Kim Stafford was in his stocking feet -- it's dojo policy to leave your shoes at the door -- and completely in his element. He moved to a discussion of William Stafford's poem "Fifteen" and described how his father "started with the ordinary." The elder Stafford once found a rusty bike near a road and used his imagination and poetic gifts to create what his son called "a poem of great longing and promise."

"Fifteen" is about a boy who finds a motorcycle in the high grass and thinks about how he could "find the end of a road, meet the sky on out Seventeenth." It uses a simple, repetitive phrase -- "I was fifteen" -- to great effect and is typical of William Stafford in its clear, direct language and resonance.

It's not hard to tell what's going on in a Stafford poem, but usually something a little more interesting is happening at the edges or just below the surface. His poetry has been drawing readers in and holding them since his first book, "West of Your City," was published in 1960, when he was 46 and teaching at Lewis & Clark College. He wrote more than 60 books before his death in 1993 and is more popular than ever.

Every January people around Oregon and around the world gather to celebrate Stafford's birthday. The events usually involve reading his poetry and poems he inspired, but there is no defined procedure or theme. This year birthday events will be held in Japan, in the Northern Nevada Correctional Center and at the site of the Los Prietos Civilian Public Service Camp, where Stafford was stationed as a conscientious objector during World War II. Sometimes there is music or a video; always, Stafford's spirit is present.

At the Writers' Dojo, Kim Stafford challenged the audience to "do a William Stafford. Let it grow." After another few minutes of silent writing, it was time to talk about how to teach Stafford's poetry. Doug Erickson, the head of special collections at Lewis & Clark, gave a short presentation about the Stafford archives. Stafford wrote every day from 1950-93 and tens of thousands of poems, letters and photographs are in the archives. The Web site has different versions of many of Stafford's poems, allowing users to see the poet's revisions and track his creative process.

Teachers described how they taught Stafford's poetry in the classroom. Andy Kulak, an English teacher at Jefferson High School, said he prepared a 40-slide presentation of Stafford's "In the Oregon Country," which he laughingly called "the worst example of overplanning in my career" because "by the third slide they were ready to go." Football players at Jefferson responded positively to Stafford's poetry and helped each other without waiting for Kulak.

Robin Judd from Success Alternative High School in Woodburn previously tried a Tupac Shakur poetry-writing workshop but found her students "felt intimidated writing in the shadow of a person they respected." Shakur is an iconic rapper whose popularity continued to grow after his murder in 1996. With Stafford, she used a workshop called "Writing Down My Family" that had students interviewing their relatives and was a great success.

Erin Ocón, a teacher at Brown Middle School in Hillsboro, taught Stafford's "The View From Here," an eight-line poem featuring penguins, to her students. She started the lesson with free-write time on the topic of cold, then showed a video of emperor penguins. Her students worked on similes with a partner and looked at Stafford's rough drafts, which was a great encouragement and confidence-builder for them to see messy drafts that didn't come out perfect the first time. Younger writers often feel their first draft is perfect, and it's instructive to them to see how important revision is in the creative process.

Gloria Canson, a language arts teacher at King Elementary School, read an original poem called "Communication" and Stafford's "Serving With Gideon." She said her students "like reading the poetry of William Stafford and arguing about what it means."

Stafford birthday events continue through Jan. 31. Local events this week: Broadway Books (7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 28); Portland State (7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 28); Oregon City Public Library (2 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30); and Looking Glass Bookstore (4 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30). More information: http://williamstafford.org