Born in Hutchinson, Kansas, William Stafford was reared in small towns on the Kansas plains. In 1937 he received a B.A. and in 1946 an M.A. from the University of Kansas at Lawrence. He received his P...
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In 1992, just months before his death, William Stafford responded to a call from the U.S. Forest Service to write a series of poems to appear on signs at scenic turnouts on the highway that twists thr...
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Critical Essay by Linda W. Wagner
When William Stafford's poems took the literati by surprise in the early sixties, they did so for a variety of reasons. In an op-pop culture, with relativism ...
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Critical Essay by George S. Lensing and Ronald Moran
Stafford's poems reveal thematically a singular and unified preoccupation. The voice of his work speaks from a sheltered vista of calm and ...
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Critical Essay by Lawrence Kramer
[A] radical faith in the power of language to implicate reality has been the religion of American poetry for at least a century…. [Recently] the American poet...
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Critical Essay by Greg Orfalea
[William Stafford] is a unique poet if there ever was one, though somewhat misunderstood, I feel, and, strangely neglected by the critics. (p. 272)
For some reason h...
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Critical Essay by Frederick Garber
The long spaces which stretch ahead of us, compelling our half-willed entry into them; that curious Other, whose approach can be deadly, whose hiding-places and mot...
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Critical Essay by G. E. Murray
[In Writing the Australian Crawl, William Stafford] gathers together articles, lectures, addresses and interviews on matters of poetic inspiration, composition, techniq...
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Critical Essay by Stephen Corey
For Roethke, the notion of the minimal had many aspects: the short-lined, tightly metered couplets and quatrains …; the subject matter of the brilliant greenhou...
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Critical Essay by Peter Stitt
William Stafford's new book, A Glass Face in the Rain, contains six introductory poems set in italic type, one standing at the beginning of each individual sectio...
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Critical Essay by Michael Mcfee
Next year—Gods and Muses, Graces and Fates willing—William Stafford will quietly turn 70…. And it's about time to ask: is there a more exem...
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William Stafford was born in Kansas in 1914. In the small town of Hutchinson, Stafford grew up with supportive parents, that both inspired him and taught him to love literature. Unlike other poets of ...
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William (Edgar) Stafford
Critical Essay by Linda W. Wagner
William Stafford
