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The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.

William Stafford

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William Stafford
Age: 79 †
Born: 1914
Born: January 17
Died: 1993
Died: August 28
Author
Poet
Writer
Hutchinson
Kansas
Signals
Darkness
Deep
Maybe
Clear
Around
Give
Giving

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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
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I heard a bird congratulating itself all day for being a jay. Nobody cared. But it was glad all over again, and said so, again.
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Everyone is born a poet - a person discovering the way words sound and work, caring and delighting in words. I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is: Why did other people stop?
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I embrace emerging experience, I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector. I want the experience of the butterfly.
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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation.
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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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All still when summer is over stand shocks in the field, nothing left to whisper, not even good-bye, to the wind. After summer was over we knew winter would come: we knew silence would wait, tall, patient calm.
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A student comes to me with a piece of writing, holds it out, says, 'Is this good?' A whole sequence of emergencies goes off in my mind. That's not a question to ask anyone but yourself.
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You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
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Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
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What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.
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The more you let yourself be distracted from where you are going, the more you are the person that you are. It's not so much like getting lost as it is like getting found.
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Keep a journal, and don't assume that your work has to accomplish anything worthy: artists and peace-workers are in it for the long haul, and not to be judged by immediate results.
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An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.
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A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
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It is as if the ordinary language we use every day has a hidden set of signals, a kind of secret code.
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You shouldn't have standards that inhibit you from writing It really doesn't make any difference if you are good or bad today. The assessment of the product is something that happens after you've done it.
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My question is when did other people give up the idea of being a poet? You know, when we are kids we make up things, we write, and for me the puzzle is not that some people are still writing, the real question is why did the other people stop?
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