Talk:William Stafford (poet)

Poem (deleted)
William Stafford is very untalked about and his poem "At the Klamath Berry Festival" is not even posted on the internet! So here it is.

(poem deleted)

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 156.108.164.69 (talk • contribs) 16:46, December 5, 2005


 * I removed copyrighted material. Cantabwarrior 17:50, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Infobox
Added Template:Infobox Writer, using information already contained in the article. Please expand or correct as needed Cantabwarrior 17:53, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

/* Career */ Changed the word "poet" to "narrator" in discussion of "Traveling through the Dark."
I made a change in the language about the poem "Traveling through the Dark." It had said "the poet discovers that she was pregnant and the fawn inside is still alive." While Stafford said that the poem is largely autobiographical, it is standard in conversations about poetry to refer to the one who's voice is present in the poem as "speaker" or "narrator." I changed "poet" to "narrator" to make a clearer distinction between Stafford himself and the person who is telling the story in the poem. --Tpoling (talk) 04:35, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Robert Frost
It is true that some have compared Stafford's writing to Robert Frost, but most of his influences are from the nineteenth century, particularly Emily Dickinson, Thomas Hardy, and William Wordsworth. I added a quotation from Paul Merchant, a published expert on Stafford to expand on the information about Stafford's style and to expand the list of poets he shares similarities with. I chose to use a quote because the Quotations page says quotes can "explain things better and less controversially than trying to explain them in one's own words." There isn't exactly a controversy, but Stafford and Frost are too different from one another--both stylistically and philosophically--to allow Frost be the only poet listed as a similar voice. It's both a matter of accuracy and completeness that I added the quote.

Earlier I flagged the sentence saying that Stafford is often compared to Frost with the "by whom?" tag. It has no source to document the claim, and I haven't yet found such a statement to be able to use here. The few that I found say Stafford and Frost cover similar themes but I haven't found one speaking specifically to style. I would still like to see a reference given for this statement, and may add it if I can find one. --Tpoling (talk) 05:26, 6 June 2014 (UTC)