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 more than rampant, Stafford dared to suggest moral judgments. People were good—or bad—because of their actions, and his "Bess," Ella, and Sublette met that judgment head-on. So did his craft…. Stafford had written poems for a long time; his craft was no accident. The use of homey language and idiom, the running sentence rhythms and casual throw-away lines, the recurrence of Midwestern locations and characters were all an integral part of the plain-William (Edgar) Stafford 1914– Photograph by Barbara Stafford-Wilson; courtesy of William Staffordstyle. Unquestionably like Walt Whitman's, especially in some early poems, the voice has in recent writing changed only slightly.

Sentence rhythm is one of the most visible characteristics of Stafford's poetry…. The continuing rhythm, phrase...