An Oregon Message

William Stafford is one of my favorite poets. His poetry is direct and as he once said, "much like talk." His subject matter is commonplace ("Volkswagen," "Why I am Happy," "Our Neighborhood"), often rural (he lives on a lake in Oregon), and open-palm honest and immediate ("You were a princess, lost; I/was a little bird. Nobody cared/where we went or how we sang"). His poetry is simple (as opposed to being grandiose or reaching for large effects), and it's in that simplicity that he serves up the most pleasure: Now stand up. The old law says work for pay. Try that shovel or this broom, just to see how it is, for a while. This collection was published in 1987 and is as good if not better than the dozens of volumes by Stafford that preceded it. The book offers up a healthy number of poems (116); most are short (fewer than 25 lines). There is excellent work here by a wonderful poet.