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The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems
  4.52 avg rating — 227 ratings
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published
1998
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2 editions
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The Darkness Around Us is Deep: Selected Poems
by William Edgar Stafford, Robert Bly  4.39 avg rating — 181 ratings
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published
1993
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2 editions
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Even in Quiet Places
4.37 avg rating — 101 ratings
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published
1996
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2 editions
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Writing the Australian Crawl
4.25 avg rating — 95 ratings
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published
1978
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You Must Revise Your Life
4.26 avg rating — 62 ratings
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published
1987
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2 editions
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Traveling Through The Dark
4.48 avg rating — 52 ratings
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published
1997
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Crossing Unmarked Snow: Further Views on the Writer's Vocation
by William Edgar Stafford, Paul Merchant , Vincent Wixon 4.24 avg rating — 41 ratings
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2 editions
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Every War Has Two Losers: William Stafford on Peace and War
by William Edgar Stafford, Kim Stafford 4.22 avg rating — 40 ratings
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published
2003
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Stories That Could Be True: New and Collected Poems
4.31 avg rating — 32 ratings
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published
1977
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2 editions
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An Oregon Message
4.40 avg rating — 25 ratings
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published
1987
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2 editions
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“A Ritual to Read to Each Other
If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider---
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give---yes or no, or maybe---
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.”
― William Edgar Stafford
If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider---
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give---yes or no, or maybe---
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.”
― William Edgar Stafford
“Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music”
― William Edgar Stafford
― William Edgar Stafford
