The William E. Stafford Archives, Series 1, Sub-Series 5: Writings for Public Readings and Workshops, 1960-1993

First line: My vest carries around this warm.

First line: For every pleasure and guided celebration.

First line: No big deal, anyone could do it.

First line: A book opens. People come out, bend.

First line: In the dark book where words crowded together.

First line: Maybe someone comes to the door and says.

First line: To think, I hold my head and roll.

First line: You reading this: Stop. It just gets.

First line: Barb, Steve....

First line: Tracker Dog, Tracker Dog, what are your plans.

First line: It’s just the Earth, a great still body.

First line: A book opens. People come out, bend.

First line: Red Wolf came, and Passenger Pigeon.

First line: Paper, please accept this life of mine.

First line: It isn’t that the blossoms fall, Ezra.

First line: One worm said to another worm, “What kind.

First line: Have you a place where, when the world.

Accepted for publication by: Choice 1972.

First line: God said come in. I came.

First line: Fog in the morning here.

First line: I like to live in the sound of water.

First line: My dreams disappear in the morning.

First line: They come wide-eyed and listening. Their extra.

First line: Breathe in as people do: try it. Now.

First line: Odd things, like a button drawer. Mean.

First line: Sometimes you see a wild flower chinning itself on the edge.

First line: A certain hunger at times sharpens abruptly.

First line: It got so any breeze would stir.

First line: The stars have died overhead in their great cold.

First line: Our town is haunted by many good deeds.

First line: I let myself drift....

First line: Once when the waves were talking one said.

First line: St Catherine....

First line: Often, while the barn braces itself.

First line: About now what was always coming.

First line: If the horizon is a straight line, that’s.

First line: Little things hide. Sometimes they.

First line: Maybe someone comes to the door and says.

Accepted for publication by: Cream City Review.

First line: This bush with light green leaves.

First line: Little trees will get bigger.

First line: My mother had a child, one dark.

Accepted for publication by: Southern Review.

First line: They had this cloud they kept like a zeppelin.

First line: One of those broken statues without any.

First line: Lead, that sullen metal, can protect.

First line: If we could get natural enough, even the river.

First line: A forest may disappear, and a grassland.

First line: The coldest sound I ever heard.

First line: Time drips from the clock and forms.

First line: We were going to the highest dune.

First line: A blank place on the page.

Accepted for publication by: Red Dirt.

First line: It happens. You knew it could.

First line: Creighton L. Herksheimer the Princeton.

First line: Sudden, it comes for you.

First line: Hagar” was one. The world.

First line: Maybe someone stumbles across that child.

First line: What kind of scene....

First line: Most workshops are revision....

First line: Mistakes come from somewhere.

First line: As you know, my poems are organically grown....

First line: Anyway, a few sparrows will come by, mostly.

First line: The Eskimo word for teacher.

First line: Many writers, I think, try to write.

First line: Writing is easy, like swimming into a fishtrap....

First line: The difference between philosophizing....

First line: A certain courtesy of the heart.

First line: Patrick Todd....

First line: You rub two words together.

First line: When a goat likes a book, the whole book is gone.

First line: To think, I hold my head and roll it.

First line: They want a wilderness with a map.

First line: Ants, when they meet each other.

First line: When we all leave here tomorrow.

First line: If you don’t know the kind of person I am.

First line: Remember that leader with the funny mustache?.

Accepted for publication by: Chadakoin Review.

First line: It was her last day. Her little Odyssey was over.

First line: What have the clouds been up to today? You can’t.

First line: Some of us clouds are too fat. Our style.

First line: One rock nudges another rock.

First line: We always have to go back when time opens.

First line: Some time when the river is ice ask me.

First line: The trouble is.

First line: We stand by the library. It is any night.

First line: Look at me. My family are gone. I am old and alone.

First line: Pretty soon light begins. Before that there won’t.

First line: A book opens. People come out, bend.

First line: When I consider...

First line: Down any valley where a new presence looms.

First line: This engine started years ago - many.

First line: Before it was now, and I think even.

First line: Experience in writing....

First line: My first book just happened.

First line: Just lying on my back and being happy.

First line: There is another river where this real water.

First line: You think I’m gone?.

First line: When a leaf touches your hand.

First line: Day after day up there beating my wings.

First line: Mine was a Midwest home - you can keep your world.

First line: In the still picture one leaf begins to move.

First line: When breath spoke, earth reached out far.

First line: The Apache word for love stings.

First line: Turn into pearls.

First line: To be a mountain you have to climb alone.

First line: I haven’t told this before....

First line: Alone or in pairs, fewer now but mysterious.

First line: Some faces make a hole in the air.

First line: You can have roses. You can train.

First line: After that knifeblade, we breathed.

First line: What the sky heard, from open throats.

First line: Ecology.

First line: Remember how bright it is.

Accepted for publication by: Rapport 8 (1975), 105.

First line: Hat pulled low at work.

First line: Pods of summer crowd around the door.

First line: Downhill, any gait will serve.

First line: By the rules you stop in that pose.

First line: Any Day, Any Night.

First line: Trying to look like the others, Ursula’s.

First line: A storm brings this - thin days, the air.

First line: No flag touched ours this year.

First line: Maybe someone stumbles across that child.

First line: More and more we live in a society....

First line: Find limits that have prevailed....

First line: Today reality corrupts.

First line: The light by the barn that shines all night.

First line: Star Guides.

First line: How a piece of the sky got lost one night.

First line: Grundy and Hoagland and all the rest who ganged.

Accepted for publication by: Negative Capability.

First line: My head turns to one side on the pillow.

First line: Experience in writing....

First line: A book opens. People come out, bend.

First line: Owls listen a lot, then turn their heads.

First line: If you go along Main Street you see.

First line: Lots of tires go around together.

First line: Falling separate into the dark.

First line: Stand alongside a river. Invoke the owls.

First line: Again tonight the cedars are listening. They hear.

First line: Often, while the barn braces itself.

First line: Remember the person you thought you were? That summer.

First line: On the night you were born.

First line: There was an island. It dissolved away.

First line: The butcher knife was there.

Accepted for publication by: Fair.

First line: That year, that summer, that vacation.

First line: Willows keep ready, in case a wind.

First line: Red Wolf came, and Passenger Pigeon.

First line: Part of the cost, we knew, was the pain.

First line: One of my wings beat faster.

Accepted for publication by: Nation.

First line: That winter of the war, every day.

Accepted for publication by: Northwest Review.

First line: Poetry on the buses.

First line: New Letters.

First line: Critical Quarterly.

First line: To Stephen Berg.

First line: To Ernest Stefanik.

First line: Chariton Review.

First line: To Marvin Bell.

First line: A dog in a book we had.

First line: All their lives out here some people know.

First line: Letter from Walter Hamady.

First line: Invisible skyrockets, we know, are going off.

First line: It’s a room where you go to understand.

First line: We stand by our library. Say it’s an August night.

First line: You find relics they left, sorry.

First line: How a piece of the sky got lost one night.

First line: Day, holding its lantern before it.

First line: The people began to know before it happened.

First line: This trunk or big suitcase.

First line: Tell them how tame geese lure wild ones.

First line: Look at me. My family are gone. I am old and alone.

First line: We pitied our uncle and the odd face.

First line: After their jobs are done old people.

First line: When evening had flowed between houses.

First line: When you’re old you dance different; and after.

First line: Now I remember: in our town the druggist.

First line: In those reaches of the night when your thoughts.

First line: The telephone line goes cold.

First line: First, this face - history did it.

First line: The old have a secret.

First line: We live near the San Andreas Fault.

First line: Grass that was moving found all shades of brown.

Accepted for publication by: Audience.

First line: We need to lose a little of the confidet....

First line: Certain writers create a zone of language....

First line: I like you with nothing. Are you.

First line: There’s a thread you follow. It goes among.

First line: I haven’t told this before....

First line: Feeling is Believing.

First line: I have this dream, doctor: I’m living in this town.

First line: In the mornings I lie partly propped up.

First line: Mostly you look back and say, well, ok. Things might have.

First line: Any Breeze to Willow.

First line: Kansas wind.

First line: Someone you trusted has treated you bad.

First line: You will never be alone, you hear so deep.

First line: It will be coming toward Earth.

First line: We were alone one night on a long.

Accepted for publication by: Chariton Review.

First line: A hand appears.

First line: Every lamp that approves its foot.

First line: Sometimes, in form of a dog, you see.

First line: By the rules you stop in that pose.

First line: To get there, Time arrives, dragging its own.

First line: Floorboards of an old car. Shaking.

First line: In India in their lives they happen.

First line: She got out of the car here one day.

First line: Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window.

First line: I’m an old gate.

First line: Maybe someone comes to the door and says.

First line: The road goes down. It stops at the sea.

First line: Love the earth like a mole.

First line: When you wake to the dream of Now.

First line: Write it as a poem first.

First line: In breath, where kingdoms hide.

First line: If you can get dumb enough....

First line: In pursuit of excellence (2 pp.).

First line: Oft it befalls by the grace of God.

First line: "The mere use of words . . .".

First line: "Art is not a pleasure, a solace . . .".

First line: Anecdote: Oral Roberts & son.

First line: Save the little pieces that escape other people.

First line: Life is a business or a love affair.

First line: You can’t make a mistake in your native language.

First line: "This is an example of the strange fate . . .".

First line: We have read your work with inexpressible pleasure..

First line: "I had not a dispute . . .".

First line: I am tired of fighting..

First line: In tracing the semantic history of important words . . ..

First line: A research study instigated by UNESCO . . ..

First line: To accomplish creative writing.

First line: As soon as art became not art . . ..

First line: Parataxic sentences.

First line: To publish?.

First line: Is this topic significant?.

First line: Choose certain aspects of the poem.

First line: They talk their hands. They wave.

First line: Met at plane.

First line: In October 1816.

First line: Do you try to tell people....

First line: Can anyone write?.

First line: I do not assume that craft....

First line: Logic is the best stream of consciousness.

First line: In grad seminr, a nun....

First line: Crows, they say....

First line: Some discourse on the page.

First line: D.H.Lawrence: an artist’s responsibility....

First line: The sense of a security base.

First line: While you are writing or reading.

First line: The line between meaningless and meaning....

First line: The world we see.

First line: Will phrasing illuminate complexities?.

First line: Living traditionally.

First line: The objectivity which I experience . . ..

First line: There are kinds of society.

First line: It’s 4 o’clock.

First line: What happens?.

First line: Independence is in “We must cultivate our...”.

First line: What kind of order...?.

First line: Besides local content....

First line: How is the art of a culture related...?.

First line: It’s for everyone.

First line: How you keep on.

First line: Successions that guide, confirm....

First line: To say the things we know.

First line: Two kinds of writers.

First line: The artist may look "upon the Sun . . .".

First line: Language halts behind intuition..

First line: In the house of forms there are many mansions..

First line: True eloquence makes light of eloquence . . ..

First line: When choosing one writer over another.

First line: Common faults:.

First line: Should you seek techniques.

First line: Vico says, as quoted by Herbert Read . . ..

First line: ". . .music has to be converted into moral power.".

First line: If you are doing a topic.

First line: Beautiful is resolution..

First line: I am the great sun but you do not see me..

First line: For me the relation between elements....

First line: All my writings may be considered tasks.

First line: That night your great guns, unawares.

First line: All events and experiences are local, somewhere.

Accepted for publication by: Tennessee Poetry Journal, Fall ‘67, Fall ‘70.

First line: A warning about this talk:....

First line: "Although written many years ago, this fictional . . .".

First line: It is a melancholy object to those . . ..

First line: A writer has no inherent authority:.

First line: Megan's "prose" begun from a . . ..

First line: "One must want to learn.".

First line: Dear Governor Atiyeh.

First line: Finding the nest of the lark.

Accepted for publication by: Northwest Challenge ‘60.

First line: A late driver listens.

Accepted for publication by: University of Portland Review ‘65.

First line: To intensify ownership, in dealing with colleagues.

Accepted for publication by: University of Portland Review ‘65.

First line: Wherever I look now is.

Accepted for publication by: University of Portland Review ‘65.

First line: Mushrooms announce their small religions.

Accepted for publication by: University of Portland Review ‘65; Inroads ‘91.

First line: They’ve gone.

Accepted for publication by: Oregonian.

First line: My family slept those level miles.

Accepted for publication by: Oregonian.

First line: According to the silence, winter has.

Accepted for publication by: Oregonian.

First line: The hidden streams of Oregon.

Accepted for publication by: Oregonian.

First line: If there were cold for injustice.

Accepted for publication by: Oregonian.

First line: Without a door closing.

Accepted for publication by: Oregonian.

First line: Air all over valley through all hand.

Accepted for publication by: Oregonian 10/14/62.

First line: Today outside your prison I stand.

Accepted for publication by: Critical Quarterly.

First line: This is the field where the battle did not happen.

Accepted for publication by: Ladies Home Journal.

First line: Our town is haunted by many good deeds.

Accepted for publication by: Granta.

First line: Talking along in our not quite prose way.

Accepted for publication by: Poetry.

First line: Night huddled our town.

Accepted for publication by: Poetry.

First line: A telephone line goes cold.

Accepted for publication by: Poetry.

First line: My father could hear a little animal step.

Accepted for publication by: Talisman.

First line: We wondered what our walk should mean.

Accepted for publication by: Focus Midwest.

First line: The war chief danced the old way.

Accepted for publication by: Mt Shasta Selections.

First line: In scenery I like flat country.

Accepted for publication by: Mt Shasta Selections.

First line: Day after day up there beating my wings.

First line: South of the bridge on Seventeenth.

First line: Talk like a jellyfish can ruin a party.

Accepted for publication by: Western Review, 1954.

First line: We stood by the library. It was an August night..

First line: Even the flaws were good-.

Accepted for publication by: Poetry Northwest.

First line: We must go back and find a trail on the ground.

Accepted for publication by: Poetry.

First line: The girl who used to sing in the choir.

Accepted for publication by: Northwest Review.

First line: The Apache word for love twists.

First line: Down in the Frantic Mountains.

Accepted for publication by: Poetry.

First line: Under my hat I custom you intricate, Ella.

Accepted for publication by: Poetry Northwest.

First line: Light wind at Grand Praire, drifting snow..

Accepted for publication by: Poetry.

First line: In the late night listening from bed.

Accepted for publication by: New Orleans Poetry Journal.

First line: Frightened at the slope of the writing, I looked up.

First line: The seed that met water spoke a little name.

Accepted for publication by: New Orleans Poetry Journal.

First line: In scenery I like flat country.

Accepted for publication by: Mt. Shasta Selections.

First line: From old Fort Walla Walla and the Klickitats.

Accepted for publication by: Hudson Review.

First line: You do not want too reserved a speaker.

Accepted for publication by: Compass Review.

First line: A star hit in the hills behind our home.

First line: When God’s parachute failed .

First line: There was a slow girl in art class.

Accepted for publication by: Poetry Australia.

First line: In the late night listening from bed.

Accepted for publication by: New Orleans Poetry Journal.

First line: Commencement Introduction (Willamette, Berkeley).

First line: To Willam Plummer.

First line: We are surrounded....

First line: We use the stupid self (2 tearsheets).

Accepted for publication by: Southwest Review.

First line: There is a near torrent silent beyond.

Accepted for publication by: Prairie Schooner.

First line: Program for R’s Poetica #6 (EOSC).

First line: Program for Idea Theatre (Oregon Poetry Assoc.) at PSC (PSU).

First line: Oh, suddenly we saw how easy.

Accepted for publication by: Northwest Review.

First line: If we built on the slope.

Accepted for publication by: Northwest Review.

First line: Like sorrow and their scarves, history.

Accepted for publication by: Northwest Review.

First line: His job is part of the budget.

Accepted for publication by: Satire Newsletter 2, Spring ‘65.

First line: Jim Barnes....

First line: to Don Step....

First line: Earthworks....

First line: Robin Skelton....

First line: To Neal Spitzer.

First line: to Frank Graziano.

First line: James Long.

First line: to Robt. W. Hill.

First line: to Brian Cox.

First line: Ohio Review.

First line: The Nation.

First line: to Jeopardy.

First line: Michael Cuddihy.

First line: Bocky.

First line: to Atlantic.

First line: Colo Q.

First line: to Cecil Hemley.

First line: to Greg Orfalea.

First line: to Salmagundi.

First line: to The Other Side.

First line: Prof Lou Lipsitz.

First line: OCE Literary Annual.

First line: Stories from Home.

First line: Southwest Rev..

First line: Sat Rev..

First line: New Yorker.

First line: New Yorker.

First line: E.V. Griffith.

First line: to Anniah Gowda.

First line: James Kugel.

First line: C.E. Loeffler.

First line: Tenn P. J..

First line: to David Ignatow.

First line: Ron Slate.

First line: P.L. Skinner.

First line: to Mark Rudman.

First line: Baxter Hathaway.

First line: Some nights you hear wires taunting the wind.

Accepted for publication by: Audience.

First line: It happens lonely - no one.

Accepted for publication by: Dragonfly 4, ‘69.

First line: Falling separate into the dark.

Accepted for publication by: Southwest Review.

First line: The still game, after the breathing.

Accepted for publication by: Barataria ‘75.

First line: Some catastrophes are better than others.

Accepted for publication by: Saturday Review.

First line: That year the news.

Accepted for publication by: Denver Quarterly.

First line: Crisis they call it? - when.

Accepted for publication by: Colorado Quarterly.

First line: They wrote his life who write.

Accepted for publication by: Critical Quarterly.

First line: Breaking every law except the one.

Accepted for publication by: Poetry 91 (1/58), Po, RY, SCBT, WII.

First line: What is that stiff figure.

Accepted for publication by: Southern Review.

First line: Language is what we talk.

First line: Traveling through that dark I found a deer.

Accepted for publication by: Hudson Review.

First line: Ours are the streets where Bess first met her.

Accepted for publication by: Carleton Miscellany.

First line: We were going to the highest dune.

First line: The hidden streams of Oregon.

Accepted for publication by: Oregonian.

First line: The farther he went the farther home grew.

First line: We’ll have an old car, the kind.

First line: I’m standing at Lakeside Drive with the bike.

Accepted for publication by: Inquiry.

First line: The color that really is comes over a desert.

Accepted for publication by: Crazy Horse.

First line: A trouble with textbook summaries....

First line: The touching appeal of nature.

First line: A long rope of gray smoke was.

First line: I sat silent.

First line: It was all the clods at once become.

First line: It’s.

First line: The seed that met water spoke a little name.

First line: Our car was fierce enough.

First line: While she was talking a bear happened along, violating.

First line: In scenery I like flat country.

First line: Ours are the streets where Bess first met her.

First line: No sound--a spell--on, on out.

First line: Once they could hold (though they dropped.

Accepted for publication by: The Nation.

First line: Full length, a grassblade saws a stone.

First line: In the news kids are playing with matches again.

First line: At the last he knew everyone.

Accepted for publication by: Hart.

First line: Little Knife said to Big Knife.

First line: From old Fort Walla Walla and the Klickitats.

Accepted for publication by: Hudson Review.

First line: Experiences that particularly strike you.

First line: David Holbrook.

First line: The nails in this grandstand.

Accepted for publication by: New Republic.

First line: Critics, teachers, all of us, ascribe....

First line: The stance of the writer.

First line: Out your writing under a good light.

First line: Please write notes on the copies....

Accepted for publication by: The Writer.

First line: Grass is our flag. It whispers, “Asia.

Accepted for publication by: Alchemy.

First line: Over this great northernland.

First line: World Order.

First line: The New Review.

First line: Art - the idea of it.

First line: I really can say no more on this subject.

First line: Meeting a class.

First line: What is it you’re starving for?.

First line: It is a melancholy object....

First line: ...by devout prayer....

First line: Please write notes.....

First line: Even before we settle down.

First line: One of the best-known passages in Friedrich Nietzsche’s writings....

First line: Tomorrow, dawn, the hour when fields are white.

First line: If you don't know the kind of person I am.

First line: When they shook the box, and poured out its chances.

First line: Something you are writing . . ..

First line: Framed in her phoenix fire-screen, Edna Ward.

First line: Put your writing under a good light. .

First line: Bess.

First line: My Father: October 1942.

First line: .

First line: An old anguish, real as a nail.

Accepted for publication by: Quixote.

First line: Ealier today I did.

First line: When you swim in the surf.

First line: Never intrude on another’s.

First line: Every sustained literary activity.

First line: After the last class.

Accepted for publication by: New Republic.