The Darkness Around Us is Deep: Selected Poems of William Stafford (Paperback)

~ William Stafford (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

108 East Nineteenth
Adults Only
Allegiances
Any Time
An Archival Print
Ask Me
At Our House
At The Bomb Testing Site
At The Un-national Monument Along The Canadian Border
Aunt Mabel
Bi-focal
By A River In The Osage County
A Catechism
Ceremony
Clash
The Concealment: Ishi, The Last Wild Indian
Consolations
A Dedication
Earth Dweller
Fall Journey
A Family Turn
The Farm On The Great Plains
Father's Voice
Fifteen
First Grade
For A Lost Child
For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid
Found In A Storm
How It Is
How These Words Happened
How To Regain Your Soul
If I Could Be Like Wallace Stevens
In Camp
In Fur
In The Deep Channel
In The Night Desert
In The Oregon Country
In The White Sky
Indian Caves In The Dry Country
The Light By The Barn
Listening
Living On The Plains
Long Distance (2)
Looking Across The River
Meditation
A Memorial: Son Bret
Mother's Day
Mr. Or Mrs. Nobody
My Father: October 1942
My Hands
My Mother Was A Soldier
Near
Objector
One Home
An Oregon Message
Our Kind
Parentage
Passing Remark
Peace Walk
People Of The South Wind
Prairie Town
Purifying The Language Of The Tribe
Remembering
Remembering Brother Bob
Report To Crazy Horse
The Rescued Year
The Research Team In The Mountains
Returned To Say
A Ritual To Read To Each Other
Run Before Dawn
Saint Matthew And All
Salvaged Parts
Sayings From The Northern Ice
Serving With Gideon
Sioux Haiku
So Long
Some Shadows
A Song In The Manner Of Flannery O'connor
A Star In The Hills
Stories To Live In The World With
A Story That Could Be True
A Thanksgiving For My Father
Things I Learned Last Week
Thinking For Berky
Time Capsule
Traveling Through The Dark
Troubleshooting
Turn Over Your Hand
Ultimate Problems
Vacation Trip
Vocation
Waiting In Line
Watching The Jet Planes Dive
Weather Report
The Well Rising
Wind World
With Kit, Age 7, At The Beach
Written On The Stub Of The First Paycheck
1940
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

Bestselling author Robert Bly selects his favorite works by the award-winning poet William Stafford.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; Paperback Original edition (January 12, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060969164
• ISBN-13: 978-0060969165
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #485,260 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Fine Selection, January 14, 1999

By	Tom Fulton (Minneapolis, Minnesota USA) - See all my reviews

Robert Bly offers a fine collection of William Stafford's work. Bly's affection and respect for Stafford shines in the introduction, which offers insights that will help many readers more fully access Stafford's work. For me, the poems themelves radiate the power and strength of gentleness and simplicity. As Stafford writes in "By a River in the Osage Country:" You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about. The selection is rich with Staffords imaginal reflections on family, his children, his parents, and the simple mysteries of the world. These are poems of moral intelligence expressed with great integrity. This is what we mean when we say a person is "grounded." The volume concludes with the classic "A Ritual to Read to Each Other," a stirring affirmation of courage and authenticty - a thouchstone in an age of denial and fearful people lying to each other.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stafford: an inspiration and guide, January 8, 2004

By	S. L. Hill-Tanquist (U.S.A.) - See all my reviews

William Stafford described his method of writing poetry as starting from any experience or thought and following it towards what is real. Listening to his poems, one feels one is being shown how to listen to oneself and to the world.

Robert Bly did a nice job of organizing the poems. There is a great video that complements this book: "William Stafford and Robert Bly: A Literary Friendship."

I highly recommend this book, though I think it may be changing my life. Risk it if you dare!

Another Amazon.com reviewer of this book complained about the quality of the paper on which it was published. I had the opposite complaint about our country's largest environmental groups, who send their members slick, environmentally-destructive magazines--as though caring about the environment is an attitude that can be divorced from action. I am guessing that Stafford chose to have his books published in a manner that had the least impact on the environment. It would be nice to have Stafford's entire collection reprinted on acid-free paper, but I have no complaints about the physical condition of _The Darkness Around Us Is Deep_.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Poems of Amazing Human being, October 16, 2002

By	Justin Evans (West Wendover, Nevada United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

There is a reason why William Stafford is on almost every graduate writing program's reading list. Not only did he write what is considered to be the best poem written in the second half of the 20th Century, his entire body of work speaks of the human condition which immediately draws in the reader.

Not having the honor of meeting William Stafford in person, I have to settle for reading his poems and listening to the stories about him, told by those who did know him. This leads to the one fault I can find with this book, for the poetry within is so complete, so warm. Unfortunately my one complaint is quite serious.

My only disappointment in this book is the quality of the paper used. The paper feels and looks like cheap pulp---which would suggest that the publishers don't have the same care of William Stafford's poetry that most readers do. Unfortunately, we readers are caught in a hard place. Many of his books are out of print and we are limited to collections such as these. My advice is to seek out some of the original editions.

I give the poetry Five stars, but I have to give the book itself a three because of the production values