Writing and publishing

 The first section of Kim Stafford’s book As the Sky Begins to Change is called “Earth Verse.” The poems are filled with images of the natural world.

I’m a walker of the woods, and I read Stafford’s “Earth Verse,” looking for language for the things I see. I see the world with a naturalist’s eyes, and the language that occurs to me is often the jargon of biology. I’m grateful there are poets in the world.

The book has other sections reflecting Stafford’s other interests, his other recurring themes. Stafford is outraged by the violence of our times. The protest poems are collected in the section “Plum Trees in War.” 

This structure suggests the way Stafford goes about putting a book together, a process that’s distinct from writing.

Stafford writes daily. He calls it a practice, and I don’t think he’d object if we thought of it as a spiritual practice.

The writing is part of his life. He writes as an everyday activity, the same way one cooks as an everyday activity. You cook breakfast for the household today, not for the ages. Stafford doesn’t worry about writing for the ages. He gives family, friends and other readers a poem in the same way that someone who’s good to you might give you breakfast.

To write daily is to write a lot, and the question is what to do with all those poems.

Stafford starts local. He publishes some individual poems online. He collects poems with a common topic or theme and makes a chapbook. He produces those himself and sends them to friends. Friends who offer encouragement are a good thing, and friends who have questions might be better. The chapbooks become the bases for the sections in his books published by Red Hen Press.

Stafford has used the image of rivulets running into streams, creeks, rivers and finally a big river that runs into the sea. If you are a spring, it’s probably more helpful to think of yourself as the source that feeds the local rivulet, rather than as the source of the Mississippi. Maybe something astonishing will happen, but it’s probably more helpful to focus on the daily practice of writing and let gravity take its course.

• Sources and notes: Kim Stafford, As the Sky Begins to Change; Pasadena, Calif.: Red Hen Press, 2024.

Kim Stafford discussed his latest book with Amy Leona Havin in an interview published as “Poet Q&A: Kim Stafford finds poetic fodder in nature, war, boyhood, and writing in new book, ‘As the Sky Begins to Change’”; Oregon ArtsWatch, June 13, 2024. It’s here:

https://www.orartswatch.org/poet-qa-kim-stafford-finds-poetic-fodder-in-nature-war-boyhood-and-writing-in-new-book-as-the-sky-begins-to-change/

Kim Stafford, the son of William Stafford, has written about his father’s writing practice. For an earlier note, see

“William Stafford's writing practice,” Jan. 17, 2024.