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 Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1954. A...

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 through the eight-thousand-foot peaks rising from the...

William Stafford's poetics is defined by his belief that all poetry is the end of a golden thread which is connected to an inner richness. Stafford's Indian heritage is palpable in his poems both in terms of language and themes. His parents and the...

Stafford County, established in 1664 and named for Staffordshire, England, is one of Virginia's fastest-growing counties, second only to Loudoun County. One reason for Stafford's phenomenal growth is its strategic location midway between Washington and Richmond, allowing proximity to the cultural and commercial...

Stafford's poems reveal thematically a singular and unified preoccupation. The voice of his work speaks from a sheltered vista of calm and steady deliberation. The speaker looks backward to a western childhood world that is joyous and at times edenic, even as he gazes with suspicion and some sense of peril upon the state of modern American society. The crux of each volume by Stafford involves the search for that earlier age identifiable by certain spiritual values associated with the wilderness, valu...

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 motivation are out in those long spaces and have to be sought for there—this is essential Stafford. If it takes some of its origin in Frost (much of our modern poetry of nature does, Emersonians to the contrary) there is also a great deal which was in Stafford from the beginning and was confirmed by Frost. Stafford saw the long spaces element...

[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 he has been accepted as a bucolic poet. This is utterly preposterous, though he digs deep into the land for analogues. He is an urbane naturalist. His touted simplicity is not simple…. He is one of the slipperiest poets around, but like seals, that's getting rare.

A discussion of William Stafford's life and how it effected his style of poetry.