Customer Reviews

Passwords

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The last book of William Stafford's from Harper is perhaps not the best first book of his to read - but, as one might expect given his maturity, these poems are sparser and even more apparently simple than some of his earlier work. As always with a William Stafford book the poems range over a variety of styles and although the poems are not directly linked, as you read more of Stafford, all his work in a sense forms one whole. Perhaps more than any review it is better to offer the title poem:

Passwords
A PROGRAM OF POEMS

Might people stumble and wander
for not knowing the right words,
and get lost in their wandering?

So--should you stand in the street
answering all passwords
day and night for any stranger?

You couldn't do that.
But sometimes your words
might link especially to some other person.

Here is a package,
a program of passwords.
It is to bring strangers together.