Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51909 in Books
• Published on: 1996-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 118 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This first volume since Stafford's death three years ago at age 79 gathers works of four chapbooks published between 1990 and 1993. Stafford's second book of poems, Traveling through the Dark, won a National Book Award in 1962. Through 50 books in 30 years his themes and style matured with no major course changes. In the poems gathered here, he recalls the past, his childhood and family: "Those bells in the heart, that dulcimer,/ and the days walking beside you, their glances/ level, equal-permanent moments..." He writes of rocks, birds, trees, dreams, his pacifism and American heritage, using reflection on the natural world and the present moment in it to illuminate an understanding of a larger condition: "-this tranquil/ chaos that seems to be going somewhere./ This wilderness with a great peacefulness in it./ This motionless turmoil, this everything dance." The title of this accomplished collection is drawn from a series of "poetry highway signs" written for the U.S. Forest Service: "Water likes to sing. If you leave it alone,/ even in quiet places, it'll talk a little/ to itself..." Stafford's poetry urges us to listen.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Though born in Kansas, Stafford (1914-93), a lifetime pacifist and much-honored poet, is associated with the Pacific Northwest. This selection, with a thoughtful afterword by his daughter (and literary executor), Kim, gathers work from My Name Is William Tell (LJ 7/92), as well as the unpublished "Methow River poems." These final serene poems, about selfhood and journeys into time, document Stafford's insight into underappreciated "little lives." A major contribution to 20th-century American poetry, his work transforms "commonest things" into universal truth. Highly recommended.?Frank Allen, North Hampton Comm. Coll., Tannersville, Pa.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Regardless whether this is the last "new" collection from Stafford (1914^-93), it well demonstrates qualities that made him genuinely beloved by his admirers. His fellow "deep image" poet Robert Bly notes in his new Sibling Society that Stafford was a Christian, which for Stafford involved being a pacifist, an egalitarian, a regionalist, an everyday ecologist, a man who believed in helping a person when help was needed. His poems are about his own quiet experiences and knowledge. They are often written in the second person (you have, you are, etc.), a manner that in most poets is annoyingly familiar and abstract at the same time but which Stafford makes personal and concrete: the poet is talking to himself, and because the images are so palpable and the ideas so wise, the reader easily becomes the companionable you and often proceeds to full identification. Stafford then forcibly projects the reader into the great world, for there are few contemporary poets more capable of dissolving the bounds between human consciousness and the spirit in all things. Ray Olson

Customer Reviews

Alive, real poetry
I picked this book up by chance; I happened upon it in the library. So I took it home with a stack of other volumes of poetry. Of those five or six books, this is the only one I remember. Reading these poems is like having someone sitting in front of you weaving a story. Every sight, every sound, every movement comes alive and performs before you. And while some poets allow the beauty of their language distance you from the poem itself, Stafford relies on simple, clear, true language, such that the reader can identify similar situations and emotions in her or his own life. Even in Quiet Places is a marvelous work, simple enough for someone just delving into poetry, and with messages deep and introspective enough for a discerning reader to envelope themselves in. It's fabulous!

How you stand here makes a difference. How you listen for the next things to happen. How you breathe . . .
This wonderful collection of poems is now over ten years old. The first posthumously published Stafford volume, it is full of the breathtaking and insightful poems for which this remarkable poet is known. Stafford's relaxed, friendly voice belies the depth and complexity of his poetry.

Bill Stafford (1914-1993) was a greatly loved and admired writer and teacher, authored 67 volumes and was the winner of the 1963 National Book Award, the Shelley Award from the Poetry Society of America and served as Poetry Consultant for the Library of Congress (1970-71). He was appointed Oregon Poet Laureate in 1975.

Stafford's poetry is truly a part of the American landscape. Seven of the poems from this volume are "published" on roadside plaques along the river that runs from the heart of the Cascade Mountains in Washington State to meet the Columbia River. The Methow River Poems, among his most visionary and beautiful creations, are a series of 19 poems written shortly before his death. Stafford answered a request by two U.S. Forest Service rangers, Curtis Edwards and Sheela McLean, who wrote him in 1992 asking him to provide the words for some of the 'interpretive' signs that appear throughout our national and state park lands. Stafford enthusiastically agreed. These poems were originally published by Confluence Press in 1995 as The Methow River Poems.

To my mind, the poem that best expresses Stafford's vision is "On Being a Person." I myself have read this poem over and over and have recited it to large audiences at commemorative readings of Stafford's poetry. You can hear a pin drop in the audience when this poem is being recited--so riveting, deep and sweeping is its vision. How we stand makes a difference. How we breathe makes a difference.

According to Kim Stafford "The poems my father contributed to the Methow project form a distinctive conclusion to this new book (Even in Quiet Places), and, if it is not too grand to say so, an unusual enrichment to the literary history of the American landscape . . . I believe the Methow poems display in the extreme a habit of mind that ... characterizes ... my father's life work." Work that reflected his "customary prolific generosity," somewhat random, with "nuggets of insight" that were universal despite an easy-going, particular, relaxed style.

There is a video of William Stafford discussing his commission by the Forest Service to write poems for road signs along the Methow River in Washington State. In the video Garrison Keillor reads six of the poems, Naomi Shihab Nye reads "A Valley Like This," and Stafford himself reads "Emily, This Place and You."

These are visions worth treasuring and sharing. Even in quiet places.

Poetry in the Wilderness
Accessable, powerful poems. These book covers topics from nature to war to using your feet to walk out of a sleasy show. My favorite single poem was the one entitled Watching Sandhill Cranes. This book is a collection of four volumes of poetry. My favorite section was the last, The Methow River Poems. These were written for the U.S. Forest Service and displayed along a wilderness road. I loved the idea of hikers coming upon a poem which grabs their attention for a moment and then re-focuses it again in a new light on the beauty around them.