‘Blue Brick from the Midwest’

 The blockbuster poem in Kim Stafford’s Singer Come from Afar is “Blue Brick from the Midwest.”

When the poet’s father, William Stafford, was dying of a heart attack, he scrawled to his wife, Dorothy:

 

and

all

my

love

 

The shaky handwriting is reproduced, a stolen stanza, in Kim’s poem.

William, also a wonderful poet, was stoic, principled, granite in grief.

But the blue brick in the poem is a block of love letters from Dorothy, written during their courtship, hidden at the bottom of his desk.

My favorite lines:

 

His way was trenchant, oblique. He mistrusted those who

talk about God, preferring to honor the holy with a glance,

a nod, or silence.

 

• Source: Kim Stafford, Singer Come from Afar; Pasadena, Calif.: Red Hen Press, 2021, pp. 112-13. Several notes on this book appeared in November.