Author: Andy Traisman Title: William Stafford and Gary Snyder

William Stafford self-portrait. Poetry is an unending conversation, whispers in the eddies, wind roaring through the pines, connective tissue between generations; collegiality, correspondence, conscience, responsibility. Teaching.

William Stafford, from the William Stafford Archives. Writing is peculiarly susceptible to this wonderful resource, language. I didnt invent it. I dont control it. It just rolls on. It comes from everybody. Its not something I learned from other writers, by any means. Its not something I learned from other critics by any means. It is a great river of possibilities swirling around us all the time. People talk to each other and come uponI guess I do it like a gull these great swoops of realization and vistas that veer off toward other formulations in language. And even the syllables have meaning William Stafford as told to Bill Moyers, October 1988. Can Poetry save the earth? Listen to Stanford professor, John Felstiner answer this question on NPR: Listen Now The goal is not to see what a poet is, but to find what poetry can do in the world -Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder by William Stafford. Earth Verse Gary Snyder Wide enough to keep you looking Open enough to keep you moving Dry enough to keep you honest Prickly enough to make you tough Green enough to go on living Old enough to give you dreams Copyright 1996 by Gary Snyder from Mountains and Rivers Without End. Used by permission of Counterpoint.

Courtesy of the William Stafford Archives.

Gary Snyder to William Stafford: 29.III. 1967 Dear Bill S. I just got back to Japan, read your letter, and the words just came tumbling out. So here it is. I was indeed sorry to miss you in Portland---but I felt your presence widely all the same they said you was in Missoula. See you again in a year or two I expect. Gary Snyder- Kyoto, Japan

Gary Snyder and Donald Hall at the NCTE Conference, 1966. Photograph by William Stafford. Teaching Poetry (Enclosed by Gary Snyder to William Stafford in letter of 29. III.1967) To begin with, the teacher must like poetryand feel its relevance to life and the world. Most English Teachers dont really like literatureand students, sensing this turn off. Poems are the magic songs of the tribeabout love, work, prophecy, healing, and death. The creation of poems for the tribe goes on: and the poems of ones own time we study mostly to know how they did it then and where their heads were at; but they dont teach is much more than that...

To teach poetry as it should be taught youd have to start with Paleolithic hunting magic and the masked animal dancers. But shortcutting that, young people (or just people who are alive?) are interested in two things: sex, and states of consciousness. Love, and magic. This is what poetry is about. In actual fact poetry is very much in the front of the spiritual and social revolution taking place in the United States. Youngsters are aware of this but their teachers arent. Teachers of English Literature should find out what their students are listening toBob Dylan, The Jefferson Airplane, Ed Sanders, Tolkienand then begin to teach. Gary Snyder-Kyoto March 29, 1967

William Stafford at a poetry workshop, Port Townsend Washington, 1970s. 26.VIII.1967 Dear Wm. Stafford The poems in VOL VIII Poetry Northwest are a delight. I want you to know I appreciate them i.e. what subtlety, irony, wit, perception in poetry should really be.married Miss Masa Hehaa on Aug 6 on Suwano-se island. Hope to see you in Portland in not too many years, Gary Snyder Honoring our Rivers: A Student Anthology

For The Children Gary Snyder The rising hills, the slopes, of statistics lie before us. the steep climb of everything, going up, up, as we all go down. In the next century or the one beyond that, they say, are valleys, pastures, we can meet there in peace if we make it. To climb these coming crests one word to you, to you and your children: stay together learn the flowers go light Copyright 1996 by Gary Snyder from Mountains and Rivers Without End. Used by permission of Counterpoint.

William Stafford on the Metolius River by Mike Markee. Ask Me William Stafford Some time when the river is ice ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life. Others have come in their slow way into my thought, and some have tried to help or to hurt: ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made. I will listen to what you say. You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait.We know the current is there, hidden; and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say. Ask Me copyright 1977, 1998 by the Estate of William Stafford. Reprinted from The Way It Is: New & Selected Poems with permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota

The Deschutes River by William Stafford.