The poet William Stafford used to get up at 4 a.m. to write. He was a teacher. He had a family, and early morning was the time he took for himself. If you wake up before other people, he said, you can be free for awhile.
That practice was a way of life, rather than a method, a matter of character, rather than of craft. Rising early as a practice is something that a person of a certain character does. A certain kind of personality finds the habit, almost as a need, and the habit shapes the person.
Stafford was a teacher of writers and explained his routine many times. One version is in his poem “Just Thinking,” which includes this stanza:
Let the bucket of memory down into the well,
bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No on
stirring, no plans. Just being there.
That’s what I’ll be doing Christmas morning. I hope you get some quiet too.
Merry Christmas.
• William Stafford, The Way It Is; Minneapolis, Minn.: Graywolf Press, 1998, pp. 32-3.
No comments:
Post a Comment