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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
Give
Giving
Signals
Darkness
Deep
Maybe
Clear
Around

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A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.
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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
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I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.
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Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.
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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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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.
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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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Once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold, found some limit beyond the waterfall, a season changes and we come back changed but safe, quiet, grateful.
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You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
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'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
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A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
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The things you do not have to say make you rich. Saying things you do not have to say weakens your talk. Hearing things you do not need to hear dulls your hearing. And things you know before you hear them — those are you, those are why you are in the world.
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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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Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right now?
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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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I don't see writing as a communication of something already discovered, as truths already known. Rather, I see writing as a job of experiment. It's like any discovery job you don't know what's going to happen until you try it.
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The root and the flower have to trust each other. If the root does not trust, the plant won't blossom.
William Stafford